


Lowlands Away

by littleblackfox



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Historically Accurate Pirates AND Mermen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Merman Bucky, Mutual Pining, Pirates, swashbuckling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-12-21 01:55:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 62,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21066851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/pseuds/littleblackfox
Summary: “You know,” Sam smirks, sitting back to sip at his rum. “Sometimes I wonder if I made the right call, leaving the ship.” He uncurls his index finger from its place on the glass, sighting it on Steve. “But then you come back into town an’ I remember how you’d get all dramatic and shit.”





	1. Curaçao

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fadefilter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadefilter/gifts), [winter_sergeant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_sergeant/gifts).
**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know,” Sam smirks, sitting back to sip at his rum. “Sometimes I wonder if I made the right call, leaving the ship.” He uncurls his index finger from its place on the glass, sighting it on Steve. “But then you come back into town an’ I remember how you’d get all dramatic and shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beautiful portrait of Steve by the fabulously talented Nabu, who you can find on [Tumblr](https://fadefilter.tumblr.com) and  
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/fadefilter)  
I am the luckiest Fox, because there will be art from the wonderful Heidi in a few chapters. In the meantime their art can be found on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/winter_sergeant) their Steve/Bucky art [Tumblr](https://winter-sergeant.tumblr.com) and all their art  
[Tumblr](https://heidimakesart.tumblr.com/)  
Go send love their way!
> 
> A thousand bottles of rum to Zee, for moral support, and to Darry for solid devotion to the Oxford comma.  
You can find me posting photos of tiny knitted fish on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/alittleblackfox) or being Ineffable on [Tumblr](https://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com)

With Nassau in the hands of the Spanish, Steve must look elsewhere to resupply.  
He clears a space on his table, pushing aside his books to make room for the map, and unfurls the stiff parchment. He weighs down each corner with whatever is to hand - a half-empty tankard of ale, a telescope, an inkwell, and a copy of Shakespears _Corolianus_, the pages onion-skin thin.  
Even without the presence of the Navy at Charles town, Steve has quietly sworn to himself never to return to that graveyard. He has seen it pass from the British to the Spanish and then back again, fighting like dogs over scraps. He has seen the island in the wake of a hurricane, a once thriving town swallowed by the sea. Built on sand, so they said, built on sand and doomed to fall, like some biblical fable.  
Steve pauses, jaw working, champing against the problem like it was something that could be chewed up and spat out, barely glancing up when there is a knock at the door.  
“Captain?” The door cracks open and the ship’s Quartermaster waits to be invited in.  
“Nat,” Steve says, waving for her to join him. “How fares the crew?”  
“Getting restless,” she says honestly, resting her hands on the edge of the table and looking over the map. “Gold in their pockets and impatient to spend it.”  
Steve nods. They’d had a run of good luck of late, one merchant ship with a captain willing to pay to keep sailing, and another who valued profit over the lives of his men. The bastard lies at the bottom of the ocean for his sins, but the ship sails on. Good speed to them.

“You got a course for me, Captain?” Nat asks, trying to draw Steve from his wandering thoughts.  
He hums, drumming his fingers against the inked paper of the map. When he had first set out to sea maps were hand painted in vivid colours, with intricate scrollwork along the borders and fanciful creatures filling the vast empty swathes of blue. Now they are printed by machines, with no thought to decoration. It seems churlish to complain, artistry lost in favour of accuracy. Perhaps he is churlish.  
“We could make port in Tortuga?” Nat suggests. “It’s only a few days sail from here.”  
“Then we’d have to deal with the Brethren of the Coast.” Steve shakes his head. “I’m in no mood to parlay with the Huguenots and their letters of marque.”  
Nat snorts, but then she’s never had much time for Privateers. “Isla Mujeres? I know Luis would like to see his family.”  
Steve hesitates, considering her suggestion. They are good people and loyal, but leaving is hard on the ship’s cook, and Steve only intends to weigh anchor a day or two. “Another time.”  
“We could go north to Ocracoke?” Nat draws her finger north, past the jut of Florida and settling on the coast of North Carolina. “Maybe pick up a few-”  
“No.” Steve drops into his chair with a sigh, resting his elbows on the bare wooden arms so he doesn’t sweep the whole damn map off the table altogether.  
Nat pulls the opposite chair out from where it is pushed under the desk and sits with far more grace than Steve managed. She leans forward, hands steepled under her chin. “Okay, out with it.”  
Steve’s mouth twists up, bitter and involuntary. He could dismiss Nat, send her back up to the deck. She’d probably ignore the order in favour of staring at him like a cat until he opens his mouth and lets everything spill out.  
It’s quicker to concede, but Steve’s conscience demands a token resistance. 

“Steve.”  
Steve glances her way. She could call him every name under the sun and he would only dig his heels in. Instead she regards him, steady and implacable, and waits for him to break first.  
He is worrying over nothing, as usual. There are few ports and coastal towns that won’t take pirate money. Oh, some will lead you on a merry dance, insisting that they would not be so vulgar or ungodly as to trade in stolen merchandise or fill their pockets with bloodied gold. No, you need a middleman, someone to meet you on the shore and bargain a fair price, before taking your goods inland to sell on to those godly folk who would never think of trading with pirates.  
In those early years Steve tolerated the system well enough. He would pay his docking fees and hand over the goods, then pocket the money and take the crew elsewhere to spend it. But now it feels like he is rattling at the bars of a wide iron gate, unable to move forward. He could sell lumber and silks on to the same man for ten years and never once speak to him, or be regarded as his equal.  
Now that he has more years at sea under his belt than on land, it irritates him to be at the mercy of that blasted middleman, and every island has its own. They might as well be one man for all it matters, one man with his tailored suits and powdered wigs. And if you don’t behave to his liking, you may as well scratch that island off the damn map, for all going there will do you.

“Steve?”  
“We were supposed to be free!” Steve snaps. “A merry life and a short one, wasn’t that the idea?”  
“I didn’t agree to short,” Nat answers honestly, and Steve rubs his knuckles against his brow.  
“All this…” he swipes at the table, the mug of ale spinning until Nat rights it, setting it back on the table with a heavy thump. “Politics.”  
“You ever considered you might be in the wrong business,” Nat asks gently.  
“If I wanted to take orders,” Steve’s mouth twists. “Line another man’s pockets with the sweat of my brow, this would still be a merchant ship.” He glances at her. “And you-”  
“I know.” Nat regards the ale at the bottom of the mug, and without hesitation gulps it down.  
That had been unfair, and Steve taste guilt, bitter as bile, in the back of his throat.  
“Did you ever hear of James Browne?” Steve asks abruptly, as if it were the silence that had made the air taste so bitter. “He sailed under Henry Avery, on his ship _Fancy_. He retired to Pennsylvania, married the daughter of a governor and was appointed to their House of Assembly.”  
Nat frowns at him. “So what? You want to get married and move to Pennsylvania?”  
“No,” Steve sighs, exasperated. He gives up trying to explain, not even sure what his point is, and slumps back in his seat.  
“Wasn’t Browne hanged?” Nat asks, putting the empty mug down with a grimace. “I heard he was trialled with William Kidd.”  
“Probably,” Steve mutters. 

Nat walks over to a cabinet nailed to the floor in one corner and rummages around until she finds a decent bottle of whisky. Steve doesn’t protest as she pulls the cork and takes a swig from the bottle, bringing it back to the table. He turns down the offer of some with a flick of his fingers, he needs a clear head.  
She takes another swig, jamming the cork back into the bottle, and taps the map. Her finger lands further west than Steve had been considering, nail scratching lightly at the ink.  
“We should go see Sam.”  
It’s a ploy. Nat always suggests a visit to Sam when Steve is in the doldrums, and his former Bo’sun has a way of lifting his spirits.  
“It’s as good a place as any to resupply,” Nat adds. “There’s no shortage of merchant ships that way. Sugar and salt, those always sell.”  
There are worse places to make port, even of Nat has her own reasons for making the suggestion. And it would be good to see Sam again. “Set a course to Curaçao,” he says at last.  
“Aye, Captain.” Nat gives him an exaggerated bow before taking her leave, whisky in hand.

*

If the good weather holds out they will reach Curaçao in little more than a week, and the crew sets to work. Idle hands are ill fortune on a ship, even a Brigantine like _the Nomad_. She is on the smaller side for a Pirate ship, two masted with a full square rig on the foremast and three sails on the mainmast, but she’s fast and maneuverable, even without lanteen sails. Barton, the Sailing Master, keeps a stash of canvas sheets below deck, and on the odd occasion when they need to get away from somewhere with alacrity, he fastens them to every post and pillar, until the ship resembles some oddly plumaged bird, carrying them away on the winds.  
Even with their recent successes, it doesn’t do to have the men sit idle, and the Carribean is rich pickings. There is no shortage of merchant ships bringing textiles and supplies from Europe and North America, filling their holds with sugar and tobacco for the return journey. Whether they are caught coming or going, there are prizes to be had, and Steve has a couple of deckhands - the boy Parker and his friend - watch the horizon for sails white and black.  
Steve has never understood the Pirate custom of black sails. That much dyed canvas does not come cheaply, and signals your intentions to a passing merchant before your canons are in range, giving the ship time to change course and flee. Perhaps it is the chase, he wonders, or to strike fear into their hearts. The Nomad has a black flag, unfurled when they are within reach of a prize, and it works well enough for him. Steve ponders this and more as he takes a walk on deck, nodding to the crewman as they pass, who suddenly try to look busy in the presence of the Captain.  
Whatever the reason, he’ll keep his sails white. No fat, greedy merchant will know his intentions until the sword is at his throat, and any black sails spied on the horizon can stay there.

*

The days pass with little to mark them, and though they spy a few fishing boats and traders, there are no merchant ships worth their time. Steve for the most part keeps to his quarters, as a Captain on deck makes the crew uneasy. They like having him aboard, a fixed point at the center of an ever-changing world, but when he walks among them they get restless, uneasy. Were it not for Nat, and his twice daily tour of the ship to check that all is in order, Steve would call himself lonely.  
On just such a patrol he sights several members of the crew looking over the starboard side of the ship, too engrossed to care about the seaspray soaking their clothes, and wanders over to see what has caught their interest. A handful of killer whales, their black and white bodies breaching the surface as they make their way west, following the ship. He leans against the gunwale and watches them, their easy grace as they burst from the waves and crash into the rolling foam.  
Steve turns away from the display, looking across the ship to the distant shore. How long before the Venezuelan fishermen see them, and come sailing out with their harpoons and their nets? Steve can’t begrudge a man needing to eat, but he’ll not bear witness either.  
“Alright,” he calls out, making several of the deckhands startle. “Back to work.”  
They disperse with a grumble of ‘Aye, Captain’, and Steve keeps watch of them until the whales are out of sight. It doesn’t pass his notice that Scott, the Bo’sun, hasn’t gone back to his duties, hovering at Steve’s elbow.

“Mr Lang?” Steve asks, his tone a little more civil than usual as Lang seems easily flustered.  
“You… uh. You not a fan of whales?” Scott nods to the railing, the boards where the crewmen had gathered.  
Steve shrugs. “I like them well enough.”  
“Oh.” Scott unties his bandana and rubs his nose with it. “Because-”  
“How long have you been aboard the ship?” Steve cuts Scott off, making him stutter.  
“You… don’t remember?” Scott looks briefly wounded, then laughs at himself, breathless and embarrassed. “Ought nine, Captain. I was aboard the _Monterey_?”  
“You joined the crew with Luis.” Steve remembers now, a loud, incessant voice amidst the cowering masses, pushing his way through the throng with Scott in tow. He had talked his way onto the ship, and Steve can’t recall exactly what it was he’d said, only that if Steve would agree to the addition of four men to his crew, Luis would stop talking.  
“That’s right,” Scott nods. “See, you do remember.”  
“In ought six we chased a prize north to Canada.” Eight months they had tracked that damned ship, following the promise of riches beyond measure. A false promise in the end, only barrel upon barrel of stinking oil, resulting in a lingering odour in the furthest corner of the hold that the sea could not wash away. “We saw something…” Steve pauses. Even now the memory is enough to shake him, how the crew rose to panic and then sank into silent awe as the creature circled them. A whale, that much he was certain, but bursting forth from the center of its skull was a twisted horn. Corpse-pale, it rounded the boat thrice, sleek body breaching the waves, and Steve had looked upon its bright black eye, and the creature had looked back.

“Captain?” Scott says softly, when Steve had stood silent for too long.  
“A Narwhal,” Steve says, though he has heard other names for the creature. “It followed the ship for several days. We became… fond of it.” He pauses, drawing in a breath. “So when a whaling ship harpooned the poor creature, hacked the horn from its head…”  
For a moment Steve finds it difficult to speak. He had been so intent on the prize, so determined to catch that damned ship. The creature could not match them at full sail, and they lost sight of it as they chased down their prey. Upon their return, the crew grumbling about bad luck, they had stumbled upon the whalers, their former companion flayed open on the deck.  
No order from Steve could have stopped the crew, already embittered by their misfortune. Their good luck, the strange creature that knocked its twisted horn against the hull and made the crew laugh, now nothing more than blood and blubber. Like a clock taken apart until it was nothing but springs and coils, if they had sewn all the pieces back together it still would not tick, so they had pushed it overboard and let the sea reclaim its own.  
“What happened to the whaler?” Scott asks, face pale.  
Steve doesn’t answer. “Back to your duties, Scott,” he says, not unkindly, and gives Scott a firm pat on the shoulder before crossing the deck and taking shelter in his cabin.

*

With fair winds they travel quickly, the crew buoyed by the promise of a few days ashore, and perhaps pushing the ship a little harder than usual. Steve indulges them as long as the ship is under no duress in so doing. And maybe he urges the ship on a little faster himself, a restiveness prickling at his skin.  
Steve has often been prone to fits of ill temperament, as though the passing of sunlight and cloud shadows make his mood swell and draw in, like a flower beset by a cloudy sky. He thought little of it, everyone’s tempers sour when cramped together on a ship for too long, or when foul weather refused to break. But Steve seems to have it backwards, his mood souring when on land for too long, his skin too tight for his form. A day or two is fine, but after that, he seems to be forever knocking shoulders with other people walking down the street. There are too many of them, fast moving and quick to anger. A day, maybe two, and the urge to knock hats from heads and teeth from mouths becomes too much for him, and he would quietly return to the ship early and wait for the return of the others. The crew loved the frantic bustle of port towns, all those strangers cramped together. How they could stand it was beyond him, the stink and noise in the taverns far too like the close confines of the Packet he’d taken to Boston as a child.  
He is older now than his father had been then, far older, and the knowledge sits uneasily.

“Captain?” There is a tap on the doorframe, and Steve glances up at the open door to see one of his crewmen peering in. Steve tries to recall her name, her real name, not the one the crew have given her; _Ghost_. It suits her, huddled up against the doorframe, keeping to the shadows like a restless spirit.  
“Ava?” The name falls from his tongue as though it had been waiting for him to speak. “What is it?”  
She holds her hands close to her chest when not brandishing a sword, thumbs tucked through ragged holes in her shirtsleeves. If one were to judge her by her current manners and appearance, and how carefully Steve addresses her, they might make the mistake of thinking her fragile. She is anything but, and the crew do not handle her delicately because she is made of glass. If anything she is a cask of gunpowder and roofing nails.  
“Luis says we’re going ashore.” Ava plucks at a loose thread on her shirt, wearing another hole in the linen.  
“To Curaçao. A free port off the coast of Venezuela. We should be there in…” Steve pauses, making a rough calculation. “Three days. Maybe four.”  
Ava nods, pressing her shoulder to the doorframe like she could sink into the wood. She says nothing more, but makes no attempt to move, and Steve rises from his seat, circling his desk to approach her.  
“Curaçao means healing,” Steve says, trying to draw her into conversation. “Sailors on long voyages would get sick. Do you know what scurvy is?” Ava nods. “Well, they’d go to Curaçao and eat the fruit growing there, then they’d get better.”  
She frowns, as though putting two disparate facts together and finding that they fit. “Is that why Luis puts limes in everything?”  
Steve lets out a rasping little laugh, more cough than anything. “That’s right. Maybe we can pick up some oranges while we are there, have a bit of variety.”  
Ava smiles, far too brief. “What else does it have?”

Steve tips his head from side to side, a little tick tock as he sifts through what he knows and what would help her to hear. “At Willemstad they say it’s like walking through a Dutch town, Antwerp or something. The houses are brightly painted and crammed together like sardines. But we’ll be staying in St Joris, the opposite side of the island. It’s not so busy, but we have friends there who will make us welcome.”  
He waits for Ava to process what he’s said. Waits for the question.  
“What do they trade?”  
“Sugar and coffee, for the most part.” Steve doesn’t say the rest.  
“And people.”  
“And people.”  
Ava punches a fresh hole through her shirt.  
“Listen to me, Ava,” Steve says, quiet and firm. “You are a part of this ship. One of my crew. Do you think we’d let you go so easily?”  
Ava’s shoulder twitches up slightly, neither yes nor no.  
“I’d sooner have them take the mainmast,” Steve takes a last step towards her, reaching out to lay his hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t flinch, not from him. “The day you leave this ship is the day you choose to, and not a moment before. If someone dares take you from us, we will hunt them down, we will not tire until you are home again. And we will blast that ship out of the water for good measure.” He gives her shoulder the lightest squeeze. “Do you understand me?”  
“Aye, Captain.” It is barely audible, a wraith, a ghost.  
“Good.” Steve lets go, and again she seems to sink into the shadows. “Now, you have your duties. Get back to them.”  
He doesn’t see her leave. She is there one minute, and the next she is not. Such skills are hard won and not easily discarded, even when they are no longer needed.  
Steve returns to his desk, his fingers prickling, his teeth clenched.

*

At four bells the sun has not breached the sea, but the skies to the east are turning a warm shade of amber and red, heralding its coming. Steve walks out onto the deck and paces along his usual route around the masts, taking in the state of the sails and rigging in the pre-dawn light.  
Day breaks quickly out at sea, the line between darkness and light paper thin, but they are not out at sea, and Caracas lies maybe eighty miles to the south. In the half-light he cannot see it yet, but he knows it is there. There is enough light to see the coral reefs they are navigating round, and the ropes and rigging creak, wind pulling at the sails. Scott will not be up on deck until eight bells ring, but his night crew handle the sails well, keeping the ship’s course steady and true. Steve catches sight of one posted at the wheel, the wig of long black curls he insists on wearing obscuring his features.  
Steve gives him a nod, and gets a raised hand in return before continuing his inspection.  
As he passes, drawing his hand along the rail, he looks out to see the islets, lit gold by the first rays of sunlight. Los Roques archipelago, Steve recalls from his map. A few hundred cayes and keyes and other words for islands strung like a necklace along the coast of Venezuela. With the large pools of water breaking each islet open and the broken chains between them, it is a necklace that has been handled by a Pirate or two, the gems prised free and the empty sockets remaining.

“Captain!” Someone shouts from further along the deck, and points down to the water.  
Steve walks over to join him, picking up his pace a little but not pushing himself to a run. The deckhand, one of the night crew charged with watching the water for reefs or rocks, pulls his woolen cap from his head, staring at the water as if in fear of his soul.  
“David?” Steve guesses, and the crewman nods, looking terrified. “What did you see?”  
David stutters for a moment, pointing at the water with the hand still holding his cap, the other pressed to his chest. “In the water, sir!”  
Steve bites down on the urge to point out how that is obvious, and tries to follow the line of David’s shaking hand. He sees rocks and dark water, and nothing more.  
“A mermaid, sir,” David bursts out. “A mermaid! Sent by the Devil himself to see us drowned!”  
Steve reaches out to grab his arm, pulling it down to his side. “Steady, now,” Steve says, quick and calm. The last thing he needs is for others to hear. There are only two things in the world that can spread in an unstoppable torrent from the slightest spark to a raging inferno and destroy a ship within hours. One is fire, the other is fear.  
“Sir, I know what I saw!” David insists, and Steve shushes him quickly.  
“These waters are filled with the strangest fish,” he says, calm and quiet. It’s not a fight if no one is shouting. “You must have seen a shark or some such, or one of those-”  
“It was a man,” David insists, voice rising an octave.  
“A man.” Steve grasps the word like a dog. “Not a maid?”  
David hesitates, a seed of doubt taking root. “He had hair like a maid,” he says slowly. “But no-”  
David cups his hands to his chest, raising his eyebrows, and Steve coughs on his own embarrassment.  
“Probably a fisherman,” he says when he’s got his breath back. “Or a pearl diver.”  
David’s brow creases. “Pearls?”  
“Caracas is eighty miles that way.” Steve points across the ship, to the distant haze of mountains lit by the rising sun. “Don’t they call it the Pearl Coast?”  
David nods, looking reassured. “I guess.” He glances over the side, taking in the silent rocks. “He ain’t there now.”  
“A pearl diver,” Steve says slowly, fixing the idea in the man’s thoughts. “Spooked by the passing of a ship.”  
“A pearl diver,” David repeats, willing to be convinced. “Yeah.”

The moment passes, and Steve pats David’s arm, sending him back to work.  
Steve walks up to the prow, left knee quaking, and takes a moment to brace himself against the gunwale, sighting along the bowsprit until his vision clears.  
What pearl diver would swim in darkness? What man would brave the water when the sharks hunger?  
He thanks whatever lucky star shines down upon him that he had been there, able to spend a few careful words at the start of something before it got out of control.  
He catches sight of something moving in the water, a flash of something brilliant and green that catches the early light. It is gone before he really registers anything, and no matter how hard he searches, he does not see it again.  
The ship sails on, and soon the Los Roques is out of sight.  
Two days later they make port at Curaçao, and Steve has all but forgotten the supposed encounter.

*

Where other ships loaded with cloth and timber would sail south to St Anna Bay they continue north, following the long stretch of golden sand to St Joris. The channel leading inland opens out to a wide bay, the shoreline meandering back and forth like a child’s drawing of a tree.  
Steve walks the deck with the rest of the crew, watching as they busy themselves with their tasks, every one of them in a hurry to be done and ashore. He catches sight of two of the night crew, Kurt and the one who had gotten so worked up over sunlight on shallow water, and a solution to two problems reveals itself. An idle man sees shapes in clouds while a busy man has no time to look.  
“David?” Steve flicks his fingers, gesturing for David to come join him. At a nod Kurt joins them.  
“Captain?” David asks, a little warily. No doubt he’s worried he’s about to be told to remain on ship while the rest of the crew go ashore.  
Steve glances around, making sure no one is listening in on them, before saying his piece. “I want you to be Ava’s escort while we’re on the island.”  
“Escort?” David’s eyebrows disappear under the brim of his woolen hat.  
“Accompany her,” Steve clarifies, watching the pair struggle with the, to Steve’s mind, fairly simple request. “Make sure she comes to no harm.”  
“She comes to no harm?” David hisses. “An’ what about everybody else?”  
Steve scowls at the pair of them, his expression severe enough to make David clamp his mouth shut.  
“Captain,” Kurt says, a wheedling edge to his voice as he plays with his curled wig. “She is a witch.” His northern tongue struggles with the nuance of the word, and it comes out as vitch.  
“Yeah, but she’s our witch.” Steve cares not one jot for the supernatural, and wishes his crew felt the same. “You’re to stay with her while she’s ashore, and get her back to the ship safely. Understood?”  
He is met with a sullen chorus of ‘Aye, Captain’, and sends them back to work.

While the bay gives shelter from the wind and waves, the waters are shallow and there is no place to make harbour. With the anchor dropped and the ship secured, Steve has the ship’s two rowing boats lowered into the water. Small and sturdy, little more than five meters in length, they are sizable enough to take the majority of his crew ashore, leaving a handful on board to stand guard and make repairs.  
Steve has heard of other ships, other crews, where the debate between who stays and who goes rages back and forth like a storm. He should feel lucky that he has enough crewmen who have sworn never to set foot on land again that his ship will not be run aground by such storms.  
He does not.  
But he does take a little time to speak with each member of the remaining crew, and tasks himself with collecting a list of items requested from shore. Their needs are few - a new shirt, a needle and reel of thread, a whetstone, a poor price for their loyalty.  
He takes the first boat at Nat’s insistence, catching a glimpse of Ava and her reluctant guards taking up the oars in the other boat.  
While the rest of the crew cast their gaze to the shore, Steve only has eyes for his ship. With its sails furled it stands so still it might be some vast creature, a great bird slumbering on the water, head tucked under its folded wing. 

There is a ragged cheer as the underside of the boat knocks against the shore, reaching land at last. Steve climbs out with the crew, splashing through the shallows as they pull the boat up the sandy beach, high above the tide line.  
The sand shifts and slides under Steve’s boots as he walks, his calf muscles complaining at the uneven ground. A ship will list and roll with the waves, but the salt-crusted boards underfoot stay firm. Steve would begrudge the land to do the same.  
The curve of white sand beach is already occupied, a small audience of townsfolk watching the arrival with interest. The ship is well known here, no doubt as soon as the flag had been sighted a guard had rushed into town to spread word of their arrival. Even at this early hour the marketplace will be bristling like an ants nest as people spread out their goods for sale on tables and spread their blankets out on the street, traders counting their coins and wondering aloud what cargo the ship has to sell this time.  
Their last visit it had been mostly textiles, several casks of burgundy, and some crates of tea, the dried leaves pressed into flat bricks. Steve had never cared much for tea, but it is scarce and valuable enough to be used as currency. The haul had been well received, and although the islanders could not match the prices offered at Nassau or Ocracoke, he much prefers the company here.

Steve turns on his heel, calling the crew together. They fuss and mutter, restless and impatient to start spending their coin and get friendly with the womenfolk of the town, and in some cases menfolk. Steve puts no such restrictions on who they set their sights on, only what manner they do it in.  
“Listen up,” Steve shouts, loud enough so that every last one of them, and more importantly the people watching them, can hear. “While you are here you will present yourself in the manner befitting one of my crew.”  
“What?” a deckhand calls back, his name escapes Steve but he recognises the boy Parker stood next to him.  
“Ned!” Parker hisses. “He means you gotta behave.”  
“Oh!” Ned gives Steve a thumbs up, and Parker half turns away from his friend, trying to make himself less of a target for any stray ire.  
“Any man found wanting in that fashion can swim back to the ship,” Steve continues, unabated. “And pray that we let him board.”  
There is a quiet mutter of assent, and their downcast expressions are more than Steve can bear. “Well, be off with you,” he says, waving them away, and they scatter before he can change his mind.

Sam is waiting where the sand gives way to tall grasses, and walks down to meet Steve, arms open wide. On deck Sam had dressed like most of the crew, in plain trousers and a tunic. No that he is landed gentry he favours well tailored jackets cut from silks and fine cloths. Steve is almost unwilling to embrace him lest he wrinkle his shirt. Almost. He wraps Sam up in a bear hug, extracting a laugh and a clap on the back from his former Bo’sun.  
“Let me take a look at you,” Sam says, holding Steve at arms length.  
Steve’s shoulders slump a little, but he lets Sam turn him this way and that.  
How does he appear? It has been weeks, maybe months, since Steve last looked in a mirror, and even then it was but a circle of brown spotted silvered glass. His blond hair he keeps tied back with a piece of cord, his beard he trims when it interferes with buttoning up his coat. Grace has given him long legs and broad shoulders, and enough balance to cross a deck in foul weather, but from Sam’s expression he is still found wanting.  
“You look like shit, Steve,” Sam says plainly, getting a snigger from the nearby crew.  
“Yeah, well you look-” Steve pauses, taking in the wide, teasing smile of his friend. “You look good, Sam.”  
“I feel good.” Sam throws an arm around Steve’s shoulder, leading him inland. “Ain’t chasing after a big blond idiot no more, nobody’s giving me orders all the live-long day.” Sam gets into his stride, the crew falling in step as they cross a narrow patch of scrubland and down into a small township hidden from the shore. “No more ‘haul on the bowline, Sam’, no more ‘weigh anchor, Sam’.”  
Sam pauses at the edge of the town, where market stalls line the narrow streets, tables piled with goods for sale or barter.  
“Was it really that bad?” Steve asks, and Sam laughs.  
“Come on, let me buy you a drink.” Sam points to a tavern. “Have something to eat, get a little colour in your cheeks.” He gives Steve a sly look. “An’ you can tell me what you’ve got to sell.”

Before too long Steve finds himself sat at a table outside one of the local taverns, feeling far too warm in his best coat despite the shade offered by a large parasol. Nat sits at his side, ledger in her lap detailing the cargo they have to sell, soaking up the sun like some kind of reptile, one of those small, slender serpents that strike faster than the eye can track.  
A serving girl brings them a tray set with a silver coffee pot and cups so small and delicate Steve cannot fit his index finger into the gold painted handle. He wrestles with the cup, almost spilling the contents, while Nat watches in amusement. Her slender finger curls neatly through the handle of her own cup as she sips delicately.  
Steve grasps his cup as though it were a whisky glass, and downs his coffee in a single swallow. Sam laughs, loud and warm and deeply fond, and pours Steve another from the pot. He sets out his own ledger and gives them both an expectant look.  
“So what have you got for me?”

For all Steve’s qualities as a leader, his skills at navigation and his cunning in battle, he is a poor negotiator. Too short-tempered and too quick-thinking, and while these are admirable traits in the heat of battle, they are disastrous at the negotiating table. His tendency to steam-roller his way through life, rather than sit at a table and negotiate the finer details of how _this_ bolt of cloth is worth _that_ much gold and here are the reasons why, is why Nat always leads negotiations.  
So Steve drinks his coffee from a too-small cup, trying to make it last by barely letting the liquid touch his lips and still finding it empty after a few sips. His feet itch as they rest on compacted earth that does not tilt and roll with the sea. It unsettles him, a world so still and so loud, like resting your head against your mother’s breast and finding stillness where there should be lungs working, ribcage rising and falling with each breath.  
They are mournful thoughts, and he pushes them aside in favour of watching the townsfolk. It seems like every one of them has contrived an excuse to pass the tavern, slowing down to stare at the three of them. He watches the complex cycle of reactions as their attention settles on Nat, confusing her for a man at first by her dress and bearing, and the coat she pulled from the body of a French lieutenant some years back, black and tight-fitting and embellished with red brocade that matches her hair. Today her red curls are tied back with a black ribbon, revealing the pearls hanging from her ears.  
Steve loves her. Loves her with the fierce, defiant pride of an elder brother. Losing Sam, watching him turn his back on the sea, had been a hardship. There will come a day when she will move on, captain her own crew or retire from the life or fall to the sword, and in his darker moments Steve wonders what will become of him then.  
While the men stare in shock, in horror, in discomfort, the women pause. A few smile, something small and brave and not for Steve’s eyes, perhaps picturing themselves far from their lives, grasping a rope with a knife clenched between their teeth. A scant few linger, hands smoothing down the folds of their skirts, blushing furiously when Nat throws a smirk their way. A tease and nothing more, her heart is set elsewhere.  
Steve pours himself another too-small cup of coffee, and keeps his mouth shut.

By the time the coffee pot is empty, Sam and Nat have reached an accord. She passes over the ledger for Steve’s approval, and he looks over the columns of goods and prices.  
“Seems fair,” he agrees, handing the ledger back. “In the morning round up the least drunk of those still on the beach and have them bring it ashore.”  
Anyone not seeking to spend the night in someone’s arms will spend the night on the sand, ostensibly to watch over the ship. In truth they will build a bonfire and get raucously drunk, and come the morning will either keep drinking or pass out in the shade. Steve will not be joining them, as a Captain tends to put a dampener on the carousing, nor will he spend the night in someone’s arms.  
“Ava,” he says on a whim. “Kurt and David should be with her, and sober if they value their hides.”  
There is no malice in his suggestion, and if Ava has tired of time ashore she’ll be able to return to the ship by way of moving cargo, and send someone back in her stead.  
“Understood,” Nat says, closing the ledger decisively. “If that’s all, Captain? I have my own business to attend to.”  
“You’re free to go,” Steve tells her. “Send my regards to Maria.”  
Nat’s mouth twitches up, and she tucks the ledger under her arm, rising to leave the table. “Oh, the last thing we’ll be doing is talking about you,” she grins, and takes her leave.

“Hell of a woman,” Sam sighs, calling for more coffee. Steve hums in agreement, turning down the offer of another cup. He has already drunk too much, his jaw aches and his fingers twitch with it.  
They take a walk around town, and Steve listens as Sam describes all that has changed since his last visit, and all the things he plans for the future.  
“So are you officially the Governor of this town now, or…” Steve trails off, looking at Sam expectantly.  
Sam laughs, shaking his head. “Mayor. This is a free state, remember.”  
“At least for now,” Steve mutters, and gets a shove for it, not hard enough to knock him off-balance, but not so gentle either.  
“If the Dutch or the English or whoever comes sailing into our harbour, we will show them that this place is self-governing and prosperous.” He grins at some private joke. “Legally so, as far as they’re concerned.”  
Steve hums, unconvinced. “And if they think otherwise?”  
Sam shoves him again, knocking him into the tall grass that lines the dirt road. “You worry too much.” Sam grips his arm and pulls him back onto the path, the way he has always done. “If it’s a problem, I’ll take care of it. If not, I want my old job back.”  
“I don’t think Nat will part with it.”  
Sam grins, displaying the gap between his two front teeth. “Why would she care? She’ll be the Captain.”  
Steve snorts, letting Sam have his fun. He would not take this kind of talk from Barton, or Dave, or even Luis, not that he would say such things. But Sam? Well, Sam has earned the right to tease now and then.

They walk down to the beach, something tightly wound in Steve’s breast loosening at the sight of the ship in the distance. He also spies Ava sitting on the beach, at the edge of the gathering around the campfire, a battered tin cup clasped in both hands. While peace is not the word that comes to Steve’s mind, she seems at ease, watching as Luis presides over a whole pig roasting over the coals. The crew must have clubbed together for the meat, though Steve wouldn’t put it past Luis to pay for such a thing out of his own pocket, just for the pleasure of cooking it. They watch as the Ship’s Cook liberally bastes the pigs hide with a bucket of something sticky and brown, using what looks suspiciously like a mop from the ship’s stores.  
“C’mon,” Sam says, pulling Steve away from the beach. “I promised you dinner, didn’t I?”  
Steve is half tempted to suggest they join the revellers on the beach, to stretch out on the sand and rest his weary head. He swallows the words and puts his back to the sea.  
“That you did,” he says instead, and gestures to the town before them. “I’m hungry, Sam. Is there anything on this green earth that hasn’t been packed in salt?”  
Sam laughs, throwing his arm around Steve’s shoulders. “I know just the place.”

Just the place is a tavern on the far side of town. They are seated in the backyard, away from the cramped and airless confines inside, and Steve is grateful in a way that he can’t put into words. He is fed with chicken and rice, and green beans that snap and crunch between his teeth. After they have eaten their fill Sam leads him away from the town to a small house surrounded by a well-tended garden. It faces inland, out of sight of the sea, and like all the other buildings is brightly painted, looking more like some kind of confection than a house. It makes Steve smile to see it.  
“Remember what you said to me?” Sam murmurs, giving Steve a moment to just look. “About making a choice?”  
Steve remembers. _If you must go, go to land. Put your back to the sea, find a place as far from her as you can, surround yourself with trees, with green. Never listen when she calls for you._  
“Come on, then,” Sam says, pushing open the door. “I have a bottle of rum with our names on it.”

One glass, just a tipple before bed, becomes two. At the offer of a third Steve doesn’t try to refuse, sitting loose-limbed and at peace in a comfortable chair in the drawing room. There is a room set aside for him, a bed laid with clean sheets, but he will sleep in the chair and wake with a stiff neck. He hasn’t slept in a bed for more than a decade, and doubts his body would even know how to sleep without his knees bent and his head held high.  
For the first time in months Steve can feel himself relax. His hands, weathered by rope and saltwater, are lax, fingers curled around his glass of dark rum. His head tips to one side, shoulders slack, and he wonders how Atlas could shoulder such a weight for eternity. His world is small, but no less heavy, at least to him.  
Of course this is the moment that Sam chooses to speak.  
“Nat’s worried about you.”  
Steve bites down on a hiss, pulling himself upright. His shoulders stiffen, boots bracing against the floor, and he takes a slow swallow of rum.  
“I’m fine.” The words come out wrong, mangled and unsure. Steve swallows until the taste of molasses fades and tries again. “Really, I am fine.”  
Sam frowns, refilling his glass with a muttered “Uh-huh.”

Where Nat uses silence, honed to an edge that could cut the breath from your throat, Sam uses kindness. Both are disarming, in their own way. Steve can weather the silence, choose the right words to fill it, but it is the kindness that he cannot stand.  
Oh, he knows what the crew say about him, when in their cups. Others may brag about their Captain being the boldest, the most merciless, how savage he is in battle, and his own men nod and smile. _Our good Captain_, they say. Not kind, because kindness cannot be borne. Kindness is akin to weakness, and that would make them vulnerable. So Steve is _good. Brave. Bold_. All these things and more, but never kind.  
From his long years on this earth, his youth a piece of ore plunged into the flames and hammered into iron, he should be brittle and cold. Tempered in flame and saltwater, he should be a cruel and merciless leader. In his heart he is not, no matter how he tries to hide it.  
And hide it he does, with distance and terse words. Such things will not shield him now, not from Sam, and an ounce of kindness would be his undoing.  
“When I was a boy,” Steve murmurs, regarding his glass. “The ocean seemed so vast.”  
Boston harbour comes so easily to mind. The creak and groan of the tall ships jostled cheek to jowl in the harbour, the masts striking for the sky like trees in winter, their leaves shed. The weight of the pack on his back and a scrap of paper clenched in his hand. He can still feel it, the curling edge growing damp against his skin, the ink bleeding into the creases of his palm.  
“It still is,” Sam says softly.  
Steve shakes his head emphatically. “No.” The word lacks strength, so he shores it up with another. “No.” Still it is not enough. “It’s being sliced into pieces, butchered like a pig in the marketplace.”  
Sam sits back with a sigh. “Is this about the Brethren of the Coast?”  
“Not just them,” Steve grips his glass a little tighter. “It’s Teach, Horigold, the whole lot of them. Carving up the world and saying _this is mine_. As if water could be marked out and claimed like a plot of land!” His voice rises, and he pauses, reigning himself in. “We were supposed to be _free_. To live without rule. But now there are places you cannot sail because one man is fighting another, and islands you cannot step onto without paying a price. And they all demand loyalty, don’t they? But if you swear fealty to Vane then Pierce is your sworn enemy, and if you don’t then you still have Black Bellamy to contend with. Swear allegiance to him or he will burn your ship and all aboard it, and that isn’t freedom, it’s…”  
“It’s what?” Sam asks, and Steve shakes his head again.  
“I don’t know,” he says at last. “Not freedom.”

Sam scrubs at his nose for a moment, mulling over Steve’s words. “Have you considered retiring?” he asks.  
Steve kicks at the table leg in a sudden burst of frustration, sending the bottle of rum between them rocking.  
“Why is that the answer to everything?” he snaps. “_If you don’t like the way things are then leave?_ Why should I leave? Why should I retire? I have as much right as any of them to sail abroad.”  
“Meaning no rights at all,” Sam points out. “That’s the whole point.”  
“Exactly!” Steve leaps on Sam’s remark. “We are supposed to live under no law, under no one banner, but now there are all these consortiums. Well maybe I don’t want to join some gang? Maybe that is why I took to this life in the first place.” The last he speaks in a whisper, as if to himself. “I served a master once, I will not do it again.”  
Sam grasps the bottle firmly, as if fearing for its safety. “Then you’re in the wrong business.”  
Steve makes an irritated little noise in the back of his throat, before the fight leaves him, slumped in his chair. “Sailing is the only thing I’m good at,” he mutters, a little more petulant than he’d like.  
“That’s not true.” Sam refills his glass. “I’ve seen you in a fight.”  
Steve snorts, depositing his glass on the table. He’s drunk enough, and feeling a mite ornery.  
“You know,” Sam smirks, sitting back to sip at his rum. “Sometimes I wonder if I made the right call, leaving the ship.” He uncurls his index finger from its place on the glass, sighting it on Steve. “But then you come back into town an’ I remember how you’d get all dramatic and shit.”  
“Sam,” Steve sighs, in no mood to be teased.  
“It’ll work out.” Sam downs the last of his rum. “One way or the other, it’ll work out.”  
He wishes Steve goodnight before taking off to his room, leaving the bottle on the table. There is maybe a glass or so left, and Steve drinks it, sip by sip, and wonders what tomorrow may bring.

_‘Tis brave to see a tall ship sail_  
_With all her trim gear on_  
_As though the devil were on her tail_  
_She ‘fore the wind will run_

\- A song of the seamen


	2. The Merman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has heard the stories, heard the songs the crew sings late at night of mermaids and sirens, luring good ships to their end. Stories, he had told himself, stories and nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art of Bucky with the glorious hair by the amazing Nabu! Go find them on [Tumblr](https://fadefilter.tumblr.com) and  
and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/fadefilter)  
Raising a bottle of rum to Zee, for moral support, and to Darry for thwarting my crimes against tenses  
You can find me posting photos of tiny knitted fish on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/alittleblackfox) or being Ineffable on [Tumblr](https://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com)

They are barely a day’s sail east from Curaçao when they catch sight of the ship. Barton spies it first, up in the rigging with his keen eyes on the horizon.  
“Sails!” he yells, pointing to the haze where the sea meets the sky.  
Steve is already on deck, soaking up the boom and roar of the waves, and moving with the list and roll of the ship. They had spent barely two days on land, and he ached for the sea every moment spent aground.  
Steve looks up to where Barton is perched on the ratlines strung along the yardarms, and sees him point north. He shouts to Nat for a spyglass, and she extends him the courtesy of not yelling to fetch one himself.  
Through the glass he spies white sails headed west, no doubt to Curaçao or one of the Antilles. He passes the spyglass back to Nat, who spends far longer than he did studying the distant shape. He busies himself looking down at the waves, gauging their height with a practiced eye.  
“We’d be tacking into the wind,” Steve mutters. “As to speed, we’d be relying on the top and maincourse sails.”  
Tacking is a perilous business. At winds below ten knots you’re like to lose momentum, and end up dead in the water. In strong winds the foremast carries too much load and is liable to crack, and a broken mast is a dead ship, and shortly after crew.  
Nat twitches one shoulder up in a shrug, attention fixed on the distant ship. “The winds are favourable, and it looks like a Barque to me. They’re low in the water,” she says, lowering the telescope. “That hold must be fit to bursting.”  
“What are we thinking?” Steve asks with a grin. “Can we catch them before they reach land?”  
Her mouth quirks up. “I say we put it to the crew.”

Steve climbs up onto the gunwale as the crew assemble on deck, grasping the thickly knotted shroud for support. The rope is taut under his hand, stretching from the ship’s hull to the mainmast, and anchors him in place.  
“There is a merchant ship,” he shouts. “To the northeast, headed towards the Lesser Antilles.” The crew look at him expectantly. “What say we go introduce ourselves?”  
There is a roar of approval, too deafening to debate over ay’s and nay’s, and Steve calls them to order.  
“Clew up the aftcourse,” Steve shouts. “Brace the main.”  
There is a ragged chorus of ‘Ay,’ and the crew set to work, scrambling up the shrouds to work the sails. As Steve watches the aft sails are hauled up and tied in place along the yardarm, while the forecourse is lowered, straining against the winds.  
For all their haste, it still takes time to turn a ship, and Steve keeps a tight grip on the shroud, the great bulk of the Nomad listing portside as she carves a crescent through the waves. When at last they have come about Steve gives the order to make full sail, and the hunt begins in earnest.

The men call it hunting, and no truer word was spoken when it comes to taking down a merchant ship.  
Much of it lies to chance, to fair wind and swift, open water, but often it comes down to sheer, rotten luck. But there is an art to the hunt as well, knowing when to prowl and when to give chase. The white sails give no clue to the ship’s purpose, but their flag marks them for what they truly are. Unfurl it too soon and the prey will run, set every sheet to the wind in a mad dash for land. Let the black fly too late and they will panic, turning their cannons and firing wildly, and such retaliations can only be met with force. Their way of life is only sustained upon the understanding that all pirates are merciless, even monsters, and that a ship that dares fire upon a pirate crew will never live to tell the tale. And if they fail to bring down the challenger? People talk, and rumours grow, and soon enough the sight of black flags would be met with scorn instead of terror.

Steve waits, watching as they draw closer to their target. On the deck the crew crouch down, hiding themselves along the gunwale and in the shadow of the mast, lurking behind the coiled ropes stacked around the bases. Each one of them is armed and ready for a fight. Steve glances back, sees Ava pressed against one of the two rowboats stored on the deck. She meets his eye, hand resting on the dirk at her hip, and gives him a slow nod. Beside her Kurt pulls his wig straight, the tight curls gathered around his shoulders like a capelet.  
The names of his crew come to him as he searches each face and finds resolve - Natasha, Peter, Drax, Scott - a litany uttered against the rest of the world.  
“Barton?” Steve shouts, raising his sword to give the signal. “Fly the black.”  
Barton, waiting for the word over on the Quarterdeck, scrambles into action, loosing the flag at the aft of the ship. The heavy canvas whips back and forth in the wind, revealing a white star within concentric circles of black and white. The crew cheer, and Steve looks to the sea, waiting for how their quarry will respond.  
After several tense minutes, a man climbs up to the merchant ship’s rail, the white cloth in his hand fluttering as he raises it above his head.

*

“All that?” Ned whispers loudly as the gather on the deck of the merchant ship, weapons in hand but pointed to the boards instead of their prey. “And we didn’t even get to fight?”  
Steve spares a glance his way, he’s leaning against a barrel with his shadow, the boy Parker.  
“You’ll get a chance to fight, kid,” Barton calls from his perch on the rails, eyes fixed on the merchant Captain waiting up on the Quarterdeck, a ledger in his hands. “This Captain is smart, knows that if he surrenders his cargo he’s got the best chance of saving his ship and his crew. No one has to fight, no one has to die.” Barton grins. “If he cares that much for his crew he might even live to see dawn.”  
Steve climbs up the steps to the Quarterdeck, Nat on his heels, one weather eye on the assembly before him. The merchant Captain is well dressed, with a neatly trimmed beard and a penchant for fine silks. By contrast his Quartermaster wears itchy-looking woolens. Steve stops at a polite distance, hands folded behind his back. Nat is less subtle, openly swinging a dagger in her hand. The Captain might be smart, but there’s no telling if his Quartermaster agrees with him, or has a pistol hidden about himself and is waiting for a chance to make a play.

“Captain Strange of the _Kamar-Taj_.” The merchant introduces himself. British, wealth dipping from every vowel. It’s a conscious effort not to hate him. “And my second, Mr Wong.”  
The Quartermaster gives the slightest nod towards Nat, who responds with a disarming smile.  
“Captain Rogers of the Nomad.” Steve gestures to Nat. “My first among equals.”  
“_Primus inter pares_,” Strange mutters, mostly to himself. “I have been given to believe that, despite all the stories going around about how your lot set yourselves on fire before charging into battle and drink the blood of your dead, that you are, in fact, civilised people.”  
Strange’s supercilious tone and red cape put Steve’s teeth on edge, and he bites down on the urge to answer in kind.  
“What is your cargo?” Nat asks, before Steve is done chewing on his own displeasure.  
Strange ignores her, but Wong holds up his leger. “Tea.”  
Steve frowns. “You’re with the East India Company?”  
He lays the palm of his hand on his sword. After the sacking of the Ganj-i-Sawai, the EIC had offered a bounty of £500 for Henry Every’s head, and Steve knows enough Latin to understand the meaning of _hostis humani generis. _  
“We are… independant traders,” Wong says delicately. “With the various companies lobbying for a trade monopoly in British-”  
“You’re a long way from London,” Steve interrupts, uninterested in the squabbles of British merchants.  
“Yes, we are,” Strange remarks, sounding bitter.  
“And a very long way from China,” Nat adds. Wong nods, looking almost mournful, and holds out the ledger.  
“The ship’s manifest. It’s all there, and we are willing to part with ten crates of tea, five bales of rattan, and two crates of linen for our…” he trails off, raising his eyebrows.

_Lives_ is the word left unspoken. He is trading for their lives, and for the future of their ship. Nat steps forward, sheathing her dagger and taking Wong by the elbow. She turns him slightly away from Strange and Steve, murmuring something in his ear.  
Strange casts the pair a dour look, as if mistrustful of his second. Steve, who has no reason to doubt his, folds his arms across his chest, taking an interest in the ship rather than make conversation with its Captain.  
It’s a fine enough vessel he can admit, albeit grudgingly, an East Indiaman, built for carrying large quantities of cargo rather than for speed. That puts it at the risk of pirates, and the twenty small guns they have on board offer little in the way of protection. Too short a range, at least the ones that line the port and starboard sides; a ship would have to be running alongside you, and if that is the case you are halfway to being boarded. The rear guns, however…  
Steve hums thoughtfully, a loss of one or two would hardly make a difference. Not really.  
“The long nines,” he calls over to Nat, and points to a pair of cannons mounted on to the stern of the Kamar-Taj. He has seen their like before, their long barrels designed to increase their range. Handy if they ever find themselves under pursuit.  
“Excuse me?” Strange bristles. “You can’t take our guns!”  
“Two barrels of powder,” Steve continues as if Strange had never spoken. “And whatever shot you have for it.”  
“You may as well demand the powder monkeys along with it,” Strange sneers, and Steve whips around to face him.  
“Gladly!” he snarls, his bared teeth making Strange recoil.

Powder monkeys. The phrase sets Steve’s nerves on edge. Such a jolly little saying, so harmless, you could forget that it referred to orphans.  
And what else was a child to do, with no mother or father, with no money or family, than take whatever they had left to their name down to the port and seek work. He had seen boys as young as eight working those ships, ferrying powder and shot from the ship’s stores to the guns. The smaller the better, so they could move quickly in the confines of the gun deck.  
Of course they were useless after a few years, too tall to fit between cannon and hull, hands grown too large to reach down into the black mouth of the barrel. The ones that lived, at least. The ones that fumbled the powder or succumbed to sickness or were standing in the wrong place when a cannon blasted through the hull in search of opposing fire. Life snuffed out for the want of a bed and basic rations.  
Steve grips the rail, hard enough to make the painted wood protest, and stares out to sea.

“Cap?” Nat calls over, and Steve loosens his death grip on the rail, turning to face her. She is still holding Wong’s precious ledger, muttering back and forth with him over some finer detail.  
“You have an accord?” Steve asks. He doesn’t look to Strange for confirmation, he doesn’t give a damn what the man has to say.  
“Eight crates of tea, four of linen. Two barrels of powder, and four cases of nine pound shot.” Nat looks down at the leger again. “And two powder monkeys.”  
“Only four crates of tea?” Steve glowers at Strange. “Those children must be very valuable.”  
“It’s the cannons,” Wong answers before Strange can open his mouth. He spreads out his hands in the universal gesture of _what can you do?_  
“Fine,” Strange huffs, dismissing the whole matter. He does not ask of the children’s future or that they will be safe in the hands of pirates. Steve watches him write them off like so many crates to be reported to his insurance broker, and grits his teeth.  
“Six crates of tea,” Steve hisses, and Strange stares at him.  
“I beg your pardon?”  
“The additional two crates will be for the children,” Steve enunciates each word to keep from biting through his own damn tongue. “My Quartermaster will set them with an account, the tea being collateral, to cover the cost of food and board while aboard my ship. If they decide not to remain with us when next we make port, the sale of which will go to them in full, to give them something to start a new life with.”  
Strange stares at him for a long minute. “You’re serious.”

Steve puts his back to Strange, leaning over the rail and shouting down to the crew watching over the merchant sailors. “Peter! Drax! Barton!”  
There is a scuffle followed by the pounding of feet on stairs, and three crewmen come up to the Quarterdeck.  
“Mr Wong, will you show these men to the stores?”  
Wong nods, taking back the ledger from Nat and making a note of the additional crates before gesturing for the men to follow him.  
Strange sputters a little, but Steve ignores him in favour of searching the crowd for familiar faces. “Scott!” he shouts. “Get a few men together and get those cannons aboard the ship. Set one at the bow and the other to the stern.”  
Scott gives a hasty ‘Aye’ before scaring up the men he usually runs around with and scrambling up to the Quarterdeck. They dodge around Strange, his arms swinging up in some half-hearted complaint. Luis, at the rear of the procession, gives him a quick, exaggerated bow before catching up with the others, and the uncomfortable silence is only broken by the strain of wood and brass, and the occasional loud suggestion to kick something until it comes loose.  
“Ava?” Steve calls down to the ship’s ghost, looking almost forlorn without her retinue. “There’s a pair of powder monkeys on board.” She looks up at him curiously. “Find them and bring them aboard, be quick about it.”  
She gives him a brief nod, moving into the crowd in such a way that Steve cannot track her, and after a moment he assumes she has gone down below.

*

By the time the crew have returned to the ship, the price for their leaving the Kamar-Taj in peace taking up space on the deck, Steve is ready to see the back of Captain Strange, if not his long suffering Quartermaster. He has half a mind to offer Wong a place on his crew, but knows loyalty when he sees it.  
Steve sets crewmen to work securing the goods in the hold, and has Scott ring the bell to call the stragglers home.  
“Cap?” Nat murmurs, joining him on the deck.  
“Not a bad day’s work,” Steve remarks, clasping his hands behind his back.  
“Could have pushed for more,” Nat says, her demeanor relaxed but her words less so.  
“You don’t pick apples from a tree by chopping it down,” Steve points out, nodding to the last of the men clambering across the gangplanks set between the two ships.  
Nat makes a little noise in the back of her throat, not exactly conceding, but at least acknowledging that fruit tomorrow might be preferable to firewood today.

Ava crosses over to the ship last, a threadbare bag slung over her shoulder. Following her across the gangplank, like a pair of ducklings, are the powder monkeys. The pair of them can’t be more than fourteen summers in age, which goes some way to explaining why Strange was so willing to part with them. Their faces are smudged with soot and grime, and their clothes torn and singed in places. Each wears a knitted cap, pulled low, shielding their eyes from the sun’s glare. Between the dirt and the hats Steve can’t mark their faces.  
Ava stops before Steve and Nat, gesturing to the pair to come over. They move quickly, hand clasped in hand, and stand with their backs straight and their heads bowed. Steve reaches out and plucks the cap off the first boy’s head, revealing a shock of grey hair. He lets out a yelp, his lunge for his cap quickly aborted when Nat rests her hand on the dagger at her hip.  
“Steve Rogers,” Steve says, turning the cap over in his hand as he gets a look at the boy. He is far too pale, his skin clammy and fishbelly white, as though the sun hasn’t touched him in a month. “Captain of the Nomad. This is the Quartermaster, Nat. She’ll see to your needs while you are aboard my ship.”  
“She?” the other boy whispers, the one with the red cap and the smaller of the two, they cast a quick look to Nat before dropping their gaze.  
“Yes, she,” Steve replies, in no mood for any superstitious nonsense about women being bad luck on a ship. “And our ghost over there is Ava, if you have issue take it up with her.”  
The boy turns to Ava, who ducks her head in a bow, and wisely chooses to say nothing.  
Steve hands the cap back to the first boy. “You got a name?”  
“Pietro,” the kid says, jamming the hat back on his head. “This is my little brother, Red.”  
“Little?” Red seethes, yanking on their joined hands and making Pietro yelp. “We’re twins!”  
The kid’s voice sounds odd underneath the thick accent, between the strange brogue and soft consonants there is something hidden.  
“I’m twelve minutes older than you,” Pietro says, unbearably smug, and Steve knows for certain that they are siblings, twins or otherwise.

“Ava, get them squared away below,” Steve says before turning his attention back to the twins. “For the time being you are guests aboard my ship. Should you wish to join the crew, you are welcome, otherwise you are free to depart when next we make port.”  
“We want to work,” Red says quickly. There are long strands of hair peeking out from under his cap, brown burnished copper where it has been touched by the sun. “We worked the cannons on the other ship, we can-”  
“We have gunners,” Steve cuts them off. “Peter and Drax over there.” He points to where the pair are arguing over a barrel of gunpowder, Drax, his bare shoulders littered with tattoos, looming over the shorter, louder man.  
“Those two?” Red snorts. “You need someone small to run the munitions, not that… that…” He runs out of words to describe the pair, one brash and the other almost as broad as he is tall.  
“Yes, well.” Steve wonders how long before someone has to intervene in their bickering. “Nothing gets in their way.”  
It’s true, more or less. One smashes through trouble like a warhammer, the other can talk his way out of it. And if there are no problems to hand they can conjure some up.  
“Take a few days,” Steve councils the pair. “Talk to the crew. See what suits you best.”  
They stare at him in that wide-eyed way of new crew, and Steve feels uncomfortable in his own skin.  
“Go on,” he says, feigning irritation. “Out of my sight before I throw you overboard.”  
They need no further encouragement, and follow Ava below decks, leaving Steve to contend with Nat and her damned smiling.  
“Peter!” Steve shouts, waving away the boy Parker when he looks up hopefully. “Get that deck cleared. Today, for God’s sake.”  
Nat keeps smirking, damn her.

*  
Steve regards himself as skilled at sizing up another man after little time together. He certainly had Captain Strange pegged as arrogant and vain after exchanging a few words, and looking back still trusts his judgement. There are some folk that make his skin crawl, though their words are pleasant enough. Something in the glitter of their eyes and the curl of their smile sets his heart trip-trapping, readying his body for an attack. So, like most observant men who pay attention to the world spinning ‘round them, he does not put it down to some preternatural skill. The crew, superstitious to the last, think otherwise.  
But with all his sound logic and perceptiveness, Steve had not expected Red to take to the rigging. Maybe the kid likes being up in the clouds after so long in the bowels of a ship, scrambling along the taut ropes stretched from hull to mast and across the yardarms.  
On their first morning of work, after the Article was signed and the twins welcomed with their first taste of good rum (and Pietro imbibed too much and spent the evening sprawled across a table in the Galley, snoring like a bear), Steve had watched Red at work with a wary eye. A fall from such heights will kill a grown man, and the last thing he wants is to see is that small frame wrapped in canvas and cast into the sea.  
But the kid is sure-footed and fast, and takes delight in the wind whipping their hair loose from under its cap, trailing like a banner behind him.  
Perhaps, given enough time and enough sea air, Red will tell them their real name. Or not. Some folks don’t take kindly to the skin they were born in, and if it pleases the kid to be known as sir then that is how they will be addressed, and no questions asked.  
Pietro, on the other hand, head filled with stories of plunder and fame, cannot settle on a role for himself, and takes his place as a deckhand. It makes an odd sort of sense to Steve, he wants to be in sight of his kin, be there first if something should befall them. Between lessons from Scott on knots and rope, and complaining about all the ropes he must haul on and the decks he must scrub, Pietro watches Red climb the rigging with vocal and blusterous pride.  
It is Pietro who first spies his sibling pointing out to sea, but there is no cry of ‘sails’ to accompany it.

Steve spies the twins looking intently at something in the distance, and walks over to the see what has their attention. He leans over the gunwale, the waves lapping against the ship, and shields his eyes from the sun low in the sky. The last few days had been good sailing weather, and he can make out the Los Roques in the distance.  
A plume of water rises up in a great arc, catching the morning sunlight. It falls in a light spray over the sleek bodies of three killer whales as they crest the surface, the black of their bodies stark contrast to the white foam.  
Steve doesn’t call for a telescope, he can see what caught the boys attention; a pod of whales on the hunt.  
As Pietro comes running over to the gunwale to see what’s out there, Steve turns away from the scene. He considers going down to his quarters and fetching his notebook, that he might make a record of the hunt. He should call upon Banner while he’s down below, the Ship’s Carpenter is something of a naturalist and would be sorely disappointed to miss out. It might even go some way to forgiving Steve for harrying him away from Curaçao when there were shells on the beach left unstudied.

When he returns, notebook in hand and Banner in tow, Pietro is still staring intently at the sea. Above him Red has looped a rope around their arm, cinching themselveshimself to the ratline while they watch the hunt.  
The ship has drawn closer to the whales in Steve’s absence, no doubt Scott indulging in the twins curiosity, and the waves around them are more white than blue, the waters churned up by the whales in motion. A vast, black body rises out of the water, crashing down again, and Steve pities whatever creature they have sighted on. He has seen them hunt before, seen them hound seals to exhaustion. He has witnessed how once the fight is won it does not end, the poor creature tossed back and forth like a ragdoll until they grow bored of the game. It is distasteful to him, such wanton cruelty.  
Steve recognises the hypocrisy of his own thoughts, is he not a hunter? Does he not seek out defenseless prey? Yes, but the end if it comes is swift, and he takes no pleasure in it.

“Man overboard!” Scott yells, pointing to the raging surf.  
Steve starts, lowering his pencil and looking down where the ship meets the sea. There is no one thrashing in the waves, no fool so caught up in the spectacle that he tumbled over the side.  
“Out there!” Scott shouts, pointing to the whales.  
Steve follows his line of sight, and there in the water he sees something. Something not quite right, though he can’t say as to why.  
Hair, long and dark and tangled like seaweed. An arm breaking the water, leading to a tanned shoulder. Blood staining the foam a dirty shade of scarlet. A flash of something green. Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that don’t fit together, no matter which way he turns them.  
“Come about!” Steve shouts up to Barton, who snaps out an ‘Aye’ and takes hold of the wheel, wrenching it to the side.  
There is someone in the water, Steve is certain of it. How he came to be out there, or why the whales set upon them he cannot say, but he will not stand idly by.

The ship lists, moving towards the whales, and the body in the water disappears from sight, lost in the crash and the foam. For a moment Steve thinks him drowned, but he reappears again, moving with purpose, slow and unsteady, towards a distant break of rocks.  
“Come on,” Steve urges, as if his words could reach the stranger’s ears, could guide him to safety.  
More crew gather along the gunwale, catching on to what is happening with admirable speed. Banner yells something Steve doesn’t catch, his ears filled with the rush of wind and wave, and the crew begins to collect up what they can lying on the deck - empty crates and short pieces of rope - and start throwing them into the water. It takes a moment for Steve to understand what is happening, until Luis pitches an onion that smacks a whale in the side. The creature twists away, and Luis yells at it in his native tongue. Steve does not speak it himself, but can guess at its meaning from the way Luis takes up another onion from his bag and throws it, aiming for the creature’s eye.  
Another onion sails through the air, striking the whale again. It is followed a moment later by an empty beer cask thrown by Drax. They are giving the drowning man a chance, drawing the whales away from the hunt. To Steve’s surprise the assault seems to be working, the surface of the water littered with fragments of wooden crates and the occasional vegetable, and the whales break off their assault, slicing through the water in search of other prey.  
The crew cheer, lobbing sticks and vulgar words after them, but Steve cares only for the poor soul in the water. In all the furor he has stopped moving, head breaking the surface to gasp for air. Steve can make out the hunch of his shoulders amidst the tangle of his hair, see the way he pants, open mouthed, head rolling back as he slips beneath the waves again.  
“He’s not going to make it,” Steve whispers.  
The water darkens around the drowner, blood spilling from some wound hidden from Steve’s sight. He curls in on himself, both hands pressed to his side, shoulders rising and falling with every pained breath. The rocks are still so far away. Too far for a wounded man to reach.  
“He’s not going to make it!” Steve shouts, turning to the crew. “Ready the longboat!”

He will not watch a man drown for the sake of propriety, and Steve races over to the nearest rowboat, tucked up against the rail further down along the deck. He tugs at the ropes tying it in place, trying to calculate how long it will take to winch it up on the ropes and lower it into the water, who will climb down into the boat to row with him. How unlikely it would be for the man to still be alive when they reach him.  
“Captain!” Drax roars, coming over to the stern and grasping the curved wooden hull. “No time for that!”  
Drax heaves, lifting the stern of the boat up, and Steve quickly understands his intentions, lifting up the bow with a strained yell.  
Luis and Scott grab hold of the ropes, bracing their feet against the deck as the longboat is heaved over the railing and thrown down into the water. It lands heavily, sending out waves, and Scott yells as his rope skids through his hands, burning his palms.  
Tiny details, little things, all of them spinning through Steve’s thoughts like an endless winding ribbon. Scott cannot handle the oars, not with a fresh rope burn. Drax is strong but heavy, and if he rushes his way down to the boat he’ll most likely crash through it. He’ll be far more handy when it comes to hauling them out again.  
“Luis. Ava,” Steve decides. “In the boat.”  
“Wait!”  
Barton, from his place at the wheel, points down to the water. Steve turns, fearing the worst. Had the whales returned while they were distracted? Had the man disappeared under the surface for one final time?  
Out on the water the drowner is insensate, spread out on the surface. The waves push and pull at him, as if trying to turn him over, seeking to pull him under. Pink foam gathers in the knotted strands of his hair, it washes over his bare chest and the deep gouges in his side the whales teeth have left. Blood seeps from the cuts on his arms, blooms bright in the bruises forming on his skin, runs in rivulets down the shining green scales of his tail.  
“A mermaid!” Scott shouts, eyes wide and panicked, and the word runs through the crew like a sabre.

Steve has heard the stories, heard the songs the crew sings late at night of mermaids and sirens, luring good ships to their end. Stories, he had told himself, stories and nothing more.  
Now he stares down at the water, at their doom amidst the wreckage of crates and barrels, and he sees no evil in its fading blue eyes.  
“Luis.” Steve’s voice shakes. “Ava.” A swallow, and the creature is turned over in the waves. “In the boat.”  
He doesn’t pause, doesn’t try to find reasons for what must surely be madness. He takes up a rope and climbs over the rail, scrambling down the side of the hull and dropping down into the boat. If no one will come he’ll row out alone if he has to.  
“Cap!”  
Steve moves out of the way in time for Luis to drop like a sack into the boat behind him, stumbling before righting himself, hands thrown out for balance. He drops down onto one of the rough hewn benches and takes up his oars. By the time he is positioned Ava drops into the boat with them, light and silent as a wraith, and just as quickly takes her place.  
Steve is too grateful to speak, and nods to them both before taking his own place at the bow, searching the water for the creature.

Wreckage knocks against the hull, scraps of rope and splinters of wood slowly being carried away to wash up on some distant shore. Steve tries not to look back at the ship, at the crew leaning over the rails, watching their mad Captain seek out their destruction.  
He catches sight of the tail before anything else, the fin spread out like a fan on the surface, and shouts for the others to row faster, bringing the boat around.  
The tail in of itself is remarkable, a long, sinuous shape the colour of emeralds and river stones, damn near the length of a man itself. The rest of the creature is harder to look upon. The waves have turned the body over, and Steve fears that they are too late, that the Merman is already dead. He can see the injuries wrought by the whales, the deep gouges in its side and the puncture marks along his stomach in keeping with their dense rows of teeth.  
Up close the hair is long but not black as Steve first thought, but a shade the word brown does not do justice to. Waves of chestnut and mahogany and copper and bronze, like looking at firelight reflected on polished brass, like autumn leaves and woodsmoke.  
Steve reaches out, hand brushing along the creature’s tanned shoulder. “Help me,” he whispers, but he doesn’t know to whom he is speaking. Ava and Luis must hear him, because they reach out with him, Ava plunging her hands into the water to grasps the creature just below the hips, Luis taking the narrowest part of the tail, and together they lift the limp body into the boat.

As soon as it is lifted from the water, the creature surges into life, arms thrashing and tail twisting, knocking them sideways in an attempt to escape. The wound in its side reopens, blood spilling to form puddles under the benches. It’s skin, cold and slippery, offers no purchase, and Steve wraps both arms around the creature’s shoulders from behind, hauling them both downwards. The creature flails, mouth open to let some piercing, ungodly shriek fill the air.  
“Hold him down!” Steve shouts, biting back a curse as the back of the creatures head connects with his nose, hard enough to draw blood.  
Ava unfastens her neckerchief and clamps it over the worst of the gouges. She leans down, using her weight as leverage to force the creature into the boat. Meanwhile Luis grapples with the thrashing tailfin, finally getting it in a bear hug. It smacks weakly at his face, leaving wet streaks across his forehead and cheeks.  
They have to get back to the ship before the Merman bleeds out all over the boat, but how can they take the oars when it struggles so? Steve sees intelligence in its wide blue eyes, and fumbles for its hand, clasping it in his own. The creature struggles, hauling itself up with a screech as a wound on its shoulder tears wider, blood soaking into Steve’s shirt.

“It’s alright,” Steve tries to soothe, tries to gentle. “It’s alright, you’re safe.”  
The creature must not hear him, or is unable to understand, and struggles on, crying out in pain each time it moves. Uninjured the three of them would have been not been able to restrain it, and Steve can feel the dense muscle of its back press to his chest, seeking leverage but having no strength to use it.  
At last it collapses, its lips tinged with blue, and falls limply into the cradle of Steve’s arms.  
“Back to the ship.” Steve’s voice sounds unsteady to his own ears, and he dare not think how it must seem to theirs. “Quick, before he wakes.”  
Ava and Luis waste no time taking up the oars, barely pausing to move the long, shimmering tail around them before striking back to the ship. The tail shines in the sunlight, wound around Ava in a serpentine curve, the tail fin hanging over the stern and trailing in the water.  
“You think they’ll let us back on board?” Luis asks over his shoulder.  
Steve doesn’t answer. He threads his free hand into the Merman’s hair, and hears the slightest hiss of breath over sharp, pointed teeth.

They meet no resistance when they return to the ship. Perhaps the crew think a dead Mermaid is less unlucky, or that its body might be worth something. If that is the case, Steve will have a few words to say on the matter. But while no one tries to stop their return to the ship, none rush to their aid either, save Drax and Banner manning the winch that lifts the boat back up onto the deck.  
When the base of the longboat touches the deck Ava and Luis climb out, soaked to the skin with the creature’s blood. The gathered crew skitter away from them, as if the blood itself was cursed. Steve stays where he is, the creature lying still in his arms, and all the dogs of Hell could not move him from his place.  
“Banner,” he rasps, the creature flinching with every utterance. “Get over here.”  
Banner lets go of the winch, slowly reaching for the lip of the boat, and stares wide eyed at the contents. “Dear God,” he whispers.  
Neither Ava nor Luis move from where they are standing by the boat, and Steve finally notices Ava’s hand on her dirk. Luis has no weapon to hand, but everyone knows he has a punch like the recoil of a cannon, and he tenses when Drax approaches, staring down at the creature sprawled against their Captain.  
“I need…” Banner wipes his mouth with his open hand, shaking his head. “I need my medicine case.”  
Drax turns, sighting the boy Parker in the gathering and pointing to him. “You heard him!” he shouts, and the creature lets out a stuttering breath. “Fetch the box of medicines!”  
Peter lets out a squeak that was probably supposed to mean yes, and runs off to search through Banners lodging.

Banner steps into the boat, kneeling down in the brine and blood pooled on the floor. With his boldness the crew begin to edge closer, fear and intrigue at war on each of their faces. Some hang back, fear winning out, but others only draw closer, curious so long as the ship does not founder on hell-wrought rocks.  
It is Kurt who finally shuffles right up to the boat, one eye on Luis and his balled right fist, and looks in. “Mermaid,” he whispers, and there is that panic again, the one Steve had managed to silence days before. There is no way he can persuade him that there is no such thing now, or try to appeal to any sense of reason.  
There is no reason left here, and the world that he thought he knew is now in tatters.  
“Bad luck.” Kurt backs off, reversing into Scott, ashen-faced and staring. “The ship is doomed. We are cursed.”  
Before his words can echo through to the rest of the men Luis speaks up. “He’s not a Mermaid!”  
It’s enough to silence Kurt, and the crew look to one another in confusion.  
“He’s not,” Luis insists. “He hasn’t got… you know…” He cups his hands to his chest, his meaning suddenly clear. “So yeah, maybe a mermaid would sink the ship an’ all that, but this here is a Mer_man_.” He throws up his arms. “So maybe he’s, like, good luck?”  
Kurt peers into the boat again, backing away before Ava makes him. “Good luck?” he asks dubiously.  
“Yeah.” Luis straightens up a little. “I think he’ll be good luck.”

Parker comes clattering up the steps to the deck, a case of tools tucked under his arm.  
“Alright, everybody back,” Luis shoults, and a path opens in the crowd. Peter hurries through it, setting the case on the ground as close as he dares before backing away to a safe distance.  
While the crew have argued back and forth, Banner has not stood idle, pulling his wire-rimmed spectacles from his pocket and studying the Merman carefully.  
“Bruce,” Steve hisses as a gentle hand is laid on the Merman’s arm, two fingers searching for a pulse at the crook of its elbow.  
Of all the roles on ship, that of Carpenter is one of the most highly regarded. He keeps the ship afloat, working constantly to fill the innumerable leaks and punctures that threaten to sink it, and gives fair warning when they need to dock and make repairs. More than that, he is the ship’s surgeon. If a man falls in battle, or suffers a wound most severe, it is the carpenter who takes up his tools and ensures the cut is clean and swift. There are men walking, in one fashion or other, on deck who would have been wrapped in canvas and consigned to the depths long ago, were it not for Banner.

“What in God’s name…” Banner crouches down in what little space is afforded between the Captain and Merman and longboat. He spares a moment for awe, to study the join between skin and scales at the creature’s hip, fingers twitching with the urge to touch, before coming to his senses.  
“Luis, get down to the Galley. Boil me some wine, as much as can be spared, and bring me clean linens.”  
He doesn’t wait for Luis to respond, trusting him to do as asked, and reaches down to the Merman’s side to touch the wound. The creature lets out a faint, rasping sound.  
“Shh,” Steve murmurs, squeezing the creature’s hand in his. “He’s here to help.”  
Maybe it understands him, or it is too weak to fight, but when Banner lays a hand on the largest of the wounds it doesn’t pull away.  
“I have no idea how to treat this,” Banner murmurs, pressing his fingers to the wounds and frowning at the fresh flow of blood it causes. Steve makes a warning sound, low in his throat, and Banner shakes his head with a pragmatism that only much later Steve will find admirable. “Well, he seems man-shaped. At least some of him is.” He reaches for his case, pulling out a few items before turning back to the Captain and the Merman in their tangled sprawl. “Ordinarily I would insist on irrigating the wounds, but I think the sea and blood will have washed away any foreign-”  
“Work faster,” Steve growls, and Banner shushes him, drawing a length of thread through a needle before setting to work.

The Merman grasps at Steve’s hand as the needle, the point smoke-blackened from being passed through a flame, pierces his skin. Banner digs the needle deep into the ragged flesh, bringing together the pulped and bloody tissue. The creature whimpers, struggling weakly, and Steve grips him tighter. With every stab of the needle the crew around them wince and murmur, some already familiar with the sting of sutures.  
“Must you?” Steve bursts out, flinching as Banner plunges the needle down again, the Merman turning his face to Steve’s shoulder as his skin puckers around another knot in the thread. “You’re hurting him.”  
“It’ll hurt more in the long run if I don’t,” Banner says, unruffled by Steve’s concern. “With deep cuts like this you need to ensure that the flesh knits together as well as the skin, otherwise you leave a void, the void fills with fluid and starts to fester…” He fastens another knot, and this time the Merman barely makes a sound.  
“He’s dying,” Steve snarls. A rare creature lies against him, skin cold and wracked with shivers, something beautiful and strange and not of the world of men. He cannot let it die, his conscious could not stand it.  
“And I will do everything I can to keep that from happening,” Banner says with implacable calm. “But I am not God and neither are you, and if this… if he dies then that is his fate.” His expression softens a little at Steve’s mutinous glare. “But I am doing all that I can.”  
There is nothing more to be said on the matter, so Steve turns away and lets Banner work, twisting his fingers in the creature’s hair and whispering a prayer against the fevered skin of his brow.  
Live. His lips brush against the cool skin, tasting salt. Please.

When Luis returns with a pan of scalded wine and a bundle of clean cloth, shouldering his way through the silent crowd around the boat, the Merman has fallen still. He does not protest the heat of the wine as Banner cleans away the last of the blood, or the press of linen to the jagged rows of stitches that mar his form from hip to shoulder. His fingers do not grasp nor twitch against Steve’s hold, and Steve is loath to let go until they do.  
It is a long time before Steve looks anywhere but at the Merman or Banner’s hands as he works. But when he does, he looks up he sees his crew surrounding the boat. For one terrible second he thinks they plan to mutiny, that they will surge forth as one and cast the boat and all within it into the sea.  
But they do not.  
They stare at the creature, at their Captain (their _good_ Captain) sprawled in the longboat, his clothes drenched in blood and seawater and cooling wine.  
If Steve makes a poor impression, then the Merman he holds to his breast is far, far worse. Lying so silent and so still he might as well be carved from marble, not cold flesh and smooth skin. The tail that had shone so brightly in the seafoam now seems dulled.  
Something itches at the back of Steve’s thoughts. Something important.

“There.” Banner straightens up, pressing his hand to the small of his back and letting out a quiet sound of discomfort. “Normally I would give him something for the pain but…” He looks down at the tail, eyes bright with wonder. “That I should live to see such a remarkable thing.”  
It is the brush of Banner’s fingers down the tail that kicks Steve into action.  
“He needs water,” Steve rasps, sitting up carefully so as not to disturb its rest. When Banner looks at him in confusion Steve tries to clarify, tries to untangle the mess of his thoughts. “One half is man, yes? But the rest is… well… A fish needs water.”  
“We can’t get the wounds wet,” Banner is quick to point out. “They need air to heal.”  
Steve curses softly, casting around for an answer.  
“Captain,” Banner says, his voice gentle, far too gentle. “He belongs in the sea.”  
Steve shakes his head, a quick snap side to side. “The other boat.” He points to the second longboat, lashed to the rail towards the stern of the ship. “We’ll put him in there. We can manage with one boat.”  
“Steve.” Banner rests a hand on Steve’s shoulder, heavy and grounding. “We’ve done all we can for him, but he doesn’t belong here.”  
Steve grimaces, and why does it trouble him so? Why does the thought of rowing out to some atoll and leaving this strange creature among the rocks feel so wrong to him, an ill deed that lodges under the ribs like a cold blade, like a betrayal.  
“No,” Steve whispers. There are strands of hair, copper and stone, twisted around his fingers, binding him to the creature’s fate as sure as a set of manacles. The tangle of them is sweeter than cold iron, and a weight he would gladly bear.  
“The second boat,” Steve shouts again, his voice steady and clear. “Fill it with seawater, we will move the… the Merman… there until he is healed.”  
No one moves, and Steve sits up, cradling the creature in his arms. “You have your orders!”  
The boy Parker is first to answer the call, followed closely by his friend. They gather up a pair of buckets and tie a length of rope to each, taking them over to the far side of the deck where the other longboat is stored and casting them down into the sea. They haul on the rope, bringing the buckets up again filled with water.  
The first splash of seawater into the boat seems to break the spell, and the rest of the crew begin to move, as if awoken from a deep slumber by the ring of eight bells. Those with tasks return to them, and the ones without find buckets and ropes of their own and join the two boys in filling the longboat.

“Captain?”  
Steve flinches, but it is only Scott approaching.  
“Mr Lang?” It feels far too strange to be so formal when immersed in bloody water, but Steve is grasping for normalcy.  
“We need a heading,” Scott says awkwardly, hands clasped in front of him. “I mean we altered our course to follow the whales, but we were on our way to la Blanquilla. So are we still going there, or are we staying here until the… uh…”  
“Merman,” Luis offers helpfully.  
“The Merman is…”  
Scott doesn’t say _recovered_, nor does he say _dead_. He holds up both hands, as though to indicate the two states of being, the ship imprisoned within the cage of them.  
“Continue on our original course,” Steve tells him, lacking any other option.  
“We’re taking it to Venezuela?” Scott yelps.  
“No.” Steve shakes his head. They can’t make port, not in Venezuela or anywhere else, not while the Merman is on board. But where can they go? “Continue on our original course for now,” Steve says slowly. “Await further headings.”  
“Aye,” Scott says dubiously, and goes up to the Quarterdeck to relay the instructions.

When the second boat is half-filled with seawater, Steve calls Ava and Luis over to help. Between them they lift the Merman up, his tail dragging like so much wet canvas. Banner walks alongside them, one hand over the dressings as if he could keep the creature from falling to pieces.  
The Merman does not protest this time, heavy and lax in their arms, but when Steve presses an ear to his bruised chest he hears the faintest pulse, like distant waves against a strange shore.  
It is a silent procession that follows along the deck, a handful of crew gathering to bear witness to the sight. With infinite care they lay the body down in the water, Luis twisting and winding the tail until it is immersed. Banner folds a piece of sailcloth and tucks it underneath the creature, raising most of the wounds out of the water, another piece Banner tucks behind its head as a pillow. The Merman could pass for sleeping were it not for the blue tinge of his lips, or the sull shade of his skin.  
“What do we do now?” Luis asks, one hand still resting on the bow of the boat, reluctant to part ways with the creature.  
Banner looks out to sea, at the sun low in the sky. “If he lives through the night,” he says, cautious, hopeful. “If there is no infection. It might… he might…”

They cannot make port, nor can they go hunting, not when they carry such a prize. The thought of someone capturing the ship, taking the Merman from them, makes Steve’s stomach churn, makes his blood scald. They need a safe harbour.  
“Set a course for Isla de Mujeres,” Steve says at last. Luis and his people have always been kind to them, and Steve hopes that they can extend that kindness a little further, to one who needs it.  
“Aye, Captain,” Banner murmurs, hauling himself to his feet. He gives Steve a pat on the shoulder before leaving to pass on the order.  
It is in the hands of fate, if the creature lives or dies. If he dies, Steve swears quietly to himself, a secret prayer for no ears but his own, he will not die alone.  
There is a crate against the rail, some provision or other that has yet to be squared away. Steve walks over to it, aware of the eyes on him, and drags it along the deck until it knocks against the side of the boat. There he sits, taking the Merman’s cold hand in his own, warming the skin with the chafing of his palms.  
“You have your duties,” he calls, voice firm and clear. “Back to work.”  
There is a murmur of assent, though Steve barely hears it, and the crew, slipping away one by one, unsettled by what the day has brought and in need of a task to occupy themselves.  
Steve watches the sky as the blue fades to black, as eight bells ring and the crew retreat to the Galley for their evening meal. He counts out the stars as the lanterns are lit, and the night crew take their stations. Somewhere in the dark he hears a fiddle playing, a song for those lost at sea, and the words rise unbidden to his lips.

_Last night last night, the moon shone bright_  
_And you know that she had sons five_  
_Tonight she may look in the salt, salt waves_  
_And find but one alive._

\- The Mermaid


	3. Debridement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you were to lever him apart like an oyster shell and scrape a blade under the meat of him, it would reveal a man trying to reach out across an ocean.  
_This is us_, it would whisper. _All that is good and bad of us. Who are you?_

After several minutes of waiting patiently, Luis gets Steve’s attention by stamping his foot on the deck _thump thump_ and waves a bowl in a friendly manner that could quickly become menacing.  
Steve holds up a hand, motioning for Luis to hold his tongue until he reaches the end of the scene, the thin pages of his book ruffled by the wind. Luis juts out his lower lip, but holds his tongue and listens as Steve reads aloud.  
“I do I know not what, and fear to find, mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind,” Steve recites to the creature in the longboat. The Merman shows no sign of wakefulness, his hair spread in the water about his head like stormclouds. “Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be, and be this so.”  
Steve tucks a scrap of paper between the pages and closes the slim volume before looking up at Luis expectantly.  
“Twelfth Night?” Luis asks, and Steve can’t help but be a little impressed. “The Captain in that is one of the good guys, right?”  
“He’s a friend to Viola, yes.” Steve rises to his feet, muscles cramping from being sat in one position so long.  
“She the _chica_ that pretends to be a _chico_?” Luis casts his gaze up at Red, climbing the rigging.  
“Leave the lad be, Luis,” Steve chides. “He has his reasons.”  
“Ain’t no doubt about that,” Luis mutters. “What was the name of that ship they were from?”  
“The Kamer-Taj,” Steve recalls easily.  
“Big ship,” Luis hums. “Lots of room for cargo, an’ lots of dark corners. Fella could get up to all kinds and not get noticed.” Luis’ expression darkens, but he cannot hold an ill humour for long, and waves the bowl under Steve’s nose. “I brought lunch, just like you asked!”  
Steve catches a waft of chili and citrus, and gives his erstwhile cook a long-suffering look. “I asked for raw fish, thinly sliced. What is that?”  
“Ceviche!” Luis says proudly. “Picked up the recipe off a guy from Lima. It’s good, Vaquita here is gonna love it.”  
“Luis,” Steve sighs, knowing the argument is already lost. Banner had been clear in his instructions, if the Merman was to recover he needed sustenance, and so far he has refused to eat. He turns away at the offer of hard tack in ale, or salt pork, or porridge, slipping under the surface of the water in his boat and feigning sleep until he is left alone.

While they are speaking the creature opens one eye, and regards the two of them warily. In the four days since they hauled him aboard the ship he has not spoken, and the only sounds he has made are ones of quiet distress whenever Banner has checked and redressed his wounds.  
The Merman survived the first night, Steve clinging to his cold hand like a drowning man, and he lived through each night that followed, the bruises on his body darkening to a mottled shade of burgundy. Some lustre has returned to his tail, the scales glittering like gemstones in the sun, but his skin is still pale. He’ll not tan any time soon, as Steve has stretched a piece of canvas across the deck above him, lest the midday sun burn his healing skin.  
Though the crew have made no move against the Merman, they are wary of his presence, and Steve ensures that he is under guard night and day, lest fear make a fool out of one of them. Scott keeps an eye out while he attends to his duties throughout the day, when the crew on deck are too busy to cause mischief. Luis presides over the creature’s mealtime, spitting out stories and jokes like a cannon loaded with words instead of iron, all the while trying to coax him into eating. In the dark hours when trouble is most likely to be found, it is Ava who stands guard over the longboat. If she speaks with the Merman, if he hears her, or answers back, she says nothing of it.  
And then there is the good Captain himself.  
No one would call it a vigil, at least not in a voice above a whisper, but as long as the sun is in the sky Steve sits on a crate beside the longboat. When he is not occupied with the running of the ship, or taking his daily turn along the deck, he reads aloud to the creature. If asked he could not say why, perhaps he would mutter something about language, about humanity, or just to fill the silence. If you were to lever him apart like an oyster shell and scrape a blade under the meat of him, it would reveal a man trying to reach out across an ocean. _This is us_, it would whisper. _All that is good and bad of us. Who are you?_

“Go get yourself fed, Cap,” Luis says, elbowing Steve aside and taking his place on the crate. “And don’t go questioning my cooking if you ever plan on eating pibil again.”  
Steve gives him a light pat on the shoulder, feeling somewhat turned around, and clomps down the steps to the lower decks to the Galley.  
The tables are already filled with crewmen, chattering loudly over their plates of salt pork and pickled cabbage. They’ll only get louder as the evening wears on, tongues loosened by cups of ale fortified with rum.  
Steve stoops a little, avoiding the low wooden beams overhead, and approaches the counter where Ned is serving up their evening meal in Luis’ absence.  
“Captain,” he says with a wide, nervous grin, and grabs a tin plate from the stack at his side.  
“Ned,” Steve answers, looking around for the boy Parker, for where there is one the other is not far.  
“How’s the… uh…” Ned gestures to the ceiling with a ladle before using it to serve up a portion of cabbage.  
“As well as can be hoped,” Steve answers, watching as the boy adds salt pork to his plate, and giving the slightest shake of his head when he tries to add a little more. “No special treatment, lad. You know the rules.”  
“Sorry.” Another nervous grin. “It’s just…”  
He trails off, and Steve takes the plate from him. “No harm done.”

There are spaces available at the tables, a rough hewn row of them fixed to the hull of the ship, hammocks strung up above them. Crewmen sit on benches around each table, elbows braced around their plates to keep them from sliding with the rolling of the ship. Steve could sit at any one of them and be made welcome, even if half the crew think him mad for bringing the Merman aboard. Still, they have not yet been struck by lightning or run aground, and little by little they must all be starting to wonder if the creature is all that unlucky.  
_The creature_. A bad habit they have fallen into. No one will say ‘Merman’ out loud, lest it draw misfortune their way, and it’s not as if they have anything else to call him by.  
It doesn’t sit well with Steve. Whatever else he might be, the Merman is intelligent, and for all his feigned sleep he shows an interest in some of the plays that Steve reads aloud.  
Steve turns on his heel, decision made, and heads back for the stairs, passing by a table where Pietro and Red are sitting, arms wrapped around their plates. Steve thinks of the girl from Twelfth Night, of Viola, and bites down on a smile as he climbs up to the deck.

“- I mean yeah, the Cap said raw fish, an’ I know you probably eat raw fish all the time, but I didn’t want to give you a parasite or something, not in your condition.”  
Steve pauses on the top step, the sound of Luis’ voice carried on the wind towards him. He had planned on pulling over a barrel and sitting with them, and if the Merman refused Luis’ food then offering up his own meal. Now that he is near he is reluctant to intrude, and instead sits in the shelter offered by a stack of coiled ropes to listen.  
“So I knew this guy Alejandro, he taught me how to make this, back when I was on this Spanish Naval ship, the _San José_?” From his position Steve can see Luis throwing himself into the story, and the Merman sitting up a little in the boat, watching him curiously. “Just for the record, I didn’t want to be working on that ship, right? Me and a bunch of guys got rounded up, hauled out of our village by the Spanish. It weren’t like anyone asked us, just threw us in the boat all by the way we’re taking all your shit and burning the place down so don’t try an’ come back here.” Luis pauses, mouth working, and then shrugs. “So seein’ as I’m such a great cook I was put to work with Alejandro in the Galley, an’ he taught me to make this.” He holds out the bowl to the Merman, who shrinks away. “C’mon, Vaquita. It’s called ceviche. _Suh vee chee_. It’s good.”

Luis picks a chunk of fish from the bowl, the raw flesh translucent and flecked with red chili. “See?” he says, throwing the morsel into his mouth and chewing. “‘S good!”  
The Merman looks dubious, but reaches out, hesitant and slow, and picks a sliver of fish from the bowl. He sniffs it, brows drawing together in a frown, and at Luis’ encouraging nod, pokes his tongue out to lick it.  
“That’s right,” Luis says, warm and proud. “Our boy’s got the idea.”  
The Merman puts the fish to his lips, and after a last moment of doubt sucks it into his mouth. He chews once and swallows, wincing a little no doubt at the sharpness of the lime juice, at the burn of chili. The morsel eaten, he presses his fingers to his lips, breathing in the faint scent of citrus and salt.  
“I knew you’d like it!” Luis slaps his knee, beaming proudly. “You want some more?”  
He holds out the bowl, and the Merman reaches out to snag another morsel.  
“Pretty good, right?” Luis picks out a thicker slice for himself, chewing loudly, before holding the bowl out to the Merman. “Gotta tell you, Vaquita. It’s a nice change makin’ something fresh, y’know? I mean don’t get me wrong.” He gestures with a thumb over his shoulder. “These guys are the best, an’ I’ve been on a lot of ships, but the Cap? He’s a good guy, you can trust him with your life, but they eat shit.”  
The Merman looks alarmed, eyes widening, and Luis laughs, holding out the bowl again. “I don’t mean, like, literal shit, just bad food. Like you try an’ make them something special, maybe some poke or a little kickshaw if you wanna get fancy.” He pauses, waiting for the Merman to react. “It’s French. You know any French? Anyways, the point is you make them something special, you push the boat out a little, I mean yeah, we’re already on a boat but you get my meaning, and what do they say?”  
The Merman takes another piece of fish from the bowl, watching Luis like a kid on his first night at the theatre.  
“They won’t eat it!” Luis throws his arms up, sending a few morsels of fish into the air. They land on the deck with a slap. “They just want salt pork, and where’s the artistry in that? You just open a barrel and boil it up, like what the Hell? You gotta eat some vegetables, man!”

The show has gone on long enough, and Steve makes his presence known, coming out onto the deck to join them.  
“Good evening, Luis.” Steve picks at a piece of salt pork on his plate. “How is our guest?”  
“Fuck!” Luis yelps, shoving the bowl into the Merman’s hands and jumping up to attention. “I mean hey, Cap.”  
For once Steve doesn’t bite down on the urge to smile. “At ease, Luis.”  
Luis scratches the back of his neck, eyeing Steve’s plate. “It is shit though, right?” he asks quietly.  
There is a piece of gristle stuck in Steve’s teeth. He works his jaw a little, but it’s wedged in firmly. “It’s sustenance,” he says, picking his words like a path through a jungle. “Easy to store, easy to transport. And at the end of a long day it fills the stomach well enough.”  
“Yeah, I know,” Luis grumbles.  
“I like that thing you do with fish,” Steve offers. “When we made port at Cancun last? You stuffed them with weeds and put them over a fire?”  
“Weeds?” Luis splutters. “Cap, that was bay leaves.”  
“It was very good,” Steve insists. At the time he had thought the Cook had gone quite mad, plucking leaves off of one particular tree like they were made of gold.  
“Yeah, well,” Luis mumbles. “If you’re staying put I’ll get back down to the Galley, make sure no one’s helping themselves to seconds. Or thirds. Ned’s a good kid but he’s free with the ladle, you know what I’m sayin’?”  
“Thank you Luis,” Steve says, quiet and genuine, and Luis gives him a clumsy little salute. “Oh. One more thing?”  
“Yes, Cap?” Luis pauses at the top of the steps, looking back towards the longboat.  
“Vaquita?”  
Luis grins, sudden and bright. “Yeah. They’re like these little, I don’t know if you got a word for them, like a porpoise? Used to see them on the waves when I was a little bean, quiet in the water, you only ever saw one if you saw them at all. An’ I had to call him something.”  
“Vaquita?” Steve says again, feeling the shape of the word against his teeth.  
“He needs a name,” Luis says simply, and before Steve can reply he clatters down the steps and back to work.

The Merman, who has been watching the whole exchange, still sits with his bowl of fish. It is a relief to see him doing anything other than feigning sleep, more so that he is eating.  
Steve takes a seat on Luis’ abandoned crate, setting his plate of cabbage and salt pork in his lap. The cabbage is unpleasantly warm in the sun, and has a smell about it reminiscent of a compost heap. It’s not Luis’ doing, it’s from a barrel of sauerkraut they had taken from another ship. When Luis makes cabbage there is still some bite to it, and an excess of onion.  
“You’re eating at last,” Steve remarks, before jamming a finger in his mouth and working the blasted bit of gristle loose. He has no intention of swallowing it, and carefully wipes it against the lip of his plate before regarding the rest of his meal. He heaves out a sigh, and braces himself for another mouthful.  
There is an odd little sound, a knock of wood on wood, and he glances up to see the Merman holding out his bowl, tapping the base on the edge of the longboat to get Steve’s attention.  
“Sss,” the Merman says slowly. “Sssuhvishee.”

For a long, numbing moment Steve can only stare at the creature. He shakes the bowl again, the contents sliding around in a far too wet and lively manner for Steve’s stomach.  
“Th…” Steve swallows, his tongue suddenly feeling huge and useless in his mouth. He makes a show of putting his plate on the deck, edging it up against the base of the longboat to keep it from sliding around. Partly it is so the Merman will understand that it is not a rejection, mostly it is to give Steve a moment to breathe.  
“Thank you.” Steve reaches out, slow and wary, to dip his hand into the bowl. He has clasped the Merman’s hand between his own in the hours before dawn, praying to a God he stopped believing in to let the creature live. He has pushed the wet strands of hair off the Merman’s face, dragged a damp cloth across his shoulders to keep hiss skin from drying out, but never once has Steve laid hands upon him when his eyes have been open and alert. It is a strange place to draw a line in the sand, but Steve has marked the boundary well, and will not cross it uninvited.  
The fish sits on his tongue, oddly textured and sharply acidic. Steve shifts it to one side with a roll of his tongue and bites down. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever eaten, not by far, but the chili makes his tongue burn and his nose itch, and after a token bite he swallows it down. The burn remains, and Steve rubs at his nose to keep from sneezing. Knowing his luck he would only bring the blasted thing up again.  
“It’s good,” he tells the Merman, who nods encouragingly, scraping up another piece for himself and offering Steve the bowl again.  
Steve swallows again, the burn in his throat somehow getting worse, and reaches out for another piece.

After a third scrap of ceviche Steve retrieves his book from under the crate, where he had stowed it away earlier in the day. He is reluctant to say ‘no more’ to the creature, in case it misunderstands and never offers again, but if he is reading then he can’t be expected to eat, can he?  
“Shall I read to you?” he asks. He always asks, and the Merman answers in his own way, slipping under the surface of his little boat-pool and feigning sleep until Steve gets the message. This time the creature seems content to be read to, letting his bowl float in the water between them while he lies back.  
“Where were-” Steve’s voice catches, and he stops, patting his chest and trying to clear his throat. Damned chilies. “Ah. Macmorris.” He clears his throat again, and the creature’s mouth twitches up. “It is no time for discourse, so Christ save me…”  
_Creature_. It seems wrong, somehow, to call what lies in the seawater filled boat beside him a creature. Or it, or Merman, or thing. _He_ is intelligent. _He_ can speak and understand and has compassion enough to share his food with another.  
“‘Tis shame for us all, so God save me. ‘Tis shame to stand still; it is shame, by my hand, and there is throats to be cut, and work to be done - do you have a name?”

Steve closes the book, thumb marking his page, and looks to the Merman, waiting for him to make some sign of understanding.  
His eyes are closed, on hand resting against his breast. Steve would think him asleep but for the way the other hand stirs the water at his side, as though the eddy soothed the ragged wound at his side. Though Banner still has concerns, the flesh has knitted together well. The thick web of dark red slashes across his hip and ribs made Steve ache to look upon. When Steve doesn’t continue with his reading the Merman’s eyes open, brow wrinkling in a frown.  
“Do you have a name?” Steve asks again. He gestures to himself with his book. “My name is Steve.”  
The Merman’s frown only deepens. “Cap,” he says warily.  
Steve starts to shake his head, shaping his mouth to repeat his name, before pausing. “Yes,” he admits. “Captain is my title. Some of the crew, Luis who brought you the ceviche, call me Cap. But my name is Steve.” He gestures to the Merman with his copy of Henry V. “What is your name?”  
The Merman shifts a little, mouth working, gaze flicking between Steve and the bowl floating beside him.  
“_Buck_?” he says at last, doubtful but trying to answer Steve’s question. “_Buck ee tah_.”  
“Vaquita?” Steve clarifies, and has to stop himself from throwing his hands up in the air. “That… that is a manner of title too. When Luis calls you Vaquita, he’s calling you a fish.”

Banner would take offence to Steve’s explanation if he could hear it, and no doubt bend his ear over the distinction between mammal and fish. From the confusion on the Merman’s face, he doesn’t understand any of what Steve has said, so he tries again.  
He pats a hand to his chest. “Steve.” Then he makes a sweeping gesture, encompassing his whole form. “Captain.”  
The Merman nods slowly, indulging Steve in the pantomime.  
“Vaquita.” Steve point’s to the Merman’s tail, glittering indigo and green in the evening light. He sweeps his hand up, following the sinuous curve of tail to his narrow waist and broad chest, finally to the top of his head.  
Waiting for a response is a special kind of frustration, but the Merman says nothing, looking quietly helpless.  
“You don’t have a name?” As soon as he asks the question Steve knows the answer. “You don’t have a name.”  
The Merman shifts uncomfortably, folding his arms over his chest and knocking the bowl of ceviche further down the boat.  
Steve heaves out a sigh, opening the book again. “I’m sorry, that was foolish of me. I shouldn’t have asked.”  
The Merman sinks into the water, tail twisting. He stares at Steve reproachfully from under the surface, his long hair spiralling around him.  
“We could…” Steve stops, feeling like a fool. But silence feels far worse than stupidity does, so he opens his mouth again. “Would you like a name?”  
The Merman resurfaces, his expression unreadable.  
“Yes?” Steve closes the book again. “What name do you want?”  
Blue eyes stare at him, unblinking, and Steve fumbles for suggestions.  
“Um. William?” Steve holds up the book, the name William printed neaty on the cover. The Merman blinks so rarely, it’s a wonder his eyes don’t ache. “Henry?” There must be a thousand names out there, ten thousand, and suddenly he cannot think of a single one. “J-Jonah?”

After several minutes filled with very few names and a lot of stuttering, Steve gives up.  
“Maybe think on it for a while?” he suggests, and the Merman slumps back into the water. He fidgets, restless in his confined space, but when he stretches his arms out he utters a bitten-off sound of pain, clasping his hand to his side.  
Reading offers some distraction from the ache, so Steve opens the book again and finds his place.  
“Here we are. Captain Jamy, he’s the one who likes listening to a good dispute, remember? Here he speaks in response to Captain Macmorris.” Steve checks that the Merman is listening, and begins to read aloud. “By the mess, ere these eyes of mine take themselves to slumber.”  
Steve pauses, shifting around on the crate to face the Merman, a name in mind at last. “Jamy,” he says carefully. “As in James.”  
The Merman’s brow furrows, mouth working. “_Jay me_,” he says. “Jamesh.”  
“Alright,” Steve says carefully. Pride swells in his breast, like bubbles of air rising upwards. “Jamy. James.”  
He clears his throat again, and suddenly finds it very hard to find more words to offer, so returns to his book instead. “-ere these eyes of mine take themselves to slumber…”

Steve reads until the sun sinks past the horizon, until he is holding the page up to a lantern light, squinting as he tries to make out the curling type on the thin page. Blast these books, why must the writing be so small?  
“Captain?”  
Steve looks up to see the ship’s ghost, her white coat the only thing clearly visible on the deck.  
“Ava.” Steve stows the book in his pocket, he isn’t going to get any more reading done this evening. “How fares the crew?”  
“Restless,” she says, taking a long look at the Merman, curled on his side and, as far as Steve can tell, sleeping. She scoops up the bowl still floating at the stern of the longboat, and tips the contents over the gunwale into the sea. “No hunting for a week now.”  
“There has been nothing to hunt,” Steve replies.  
“Yes, you’ve made sure of that.”  
Steve rises to his feet, though he does not expect a challenge. Ava is brutal in her honesty, but she is also loyal to him. And it is true, he has directed the ship away from the busy trade routes while since the cre- while James has come into his care.  
“We are hardly in a place to start chasing merchant ships,” he says quietly. “What if we were captured?” _What if he was captured?_  
“That’s never been a concern before,” Ava says with the slightest smile. _He won’t be._

Steve takes a step away from the longboat, and looks out to sea. “How long before ‘restless’ becomes a problem?”  
She considers the question, turning the bowl around in her hands. “It’s not for want of prey,” she says at last. “A month or more can pass without plunder. It’s the not looking that don’t sit right with them.”  
Steve could argue the case. The Merman holds no fear for her, and she would most likely support his decision to favour his safety over seeking out fresh quarry, but in truth he cannot afford to delay much longer. Supplies and repairs cost money, and without goods to trade their coffers will soon be empty. And then they will be dead in the water.  
Steve scrubs at his face, nails catching on the light burr of stubble on his cheek. “And our guest?” he asks, bracing himself. “What is the mood below decks?”  
Ava shrugs, one shoulder twitching up. “We have not been wrecked yet, or burst into flames, or whatever else it is that Mermaids do.” She gives Steve a sly look. “A good hunt would turn them around. Sailors are superstitious, you know that. If the next hunt is a success, it would be easy enough for them to credit it to his being here.”  
She watches the Merman in his sleep, something almost tender in her expression. She sees something of herself in James, Steve doesn’t doubt, though what he cannot say.  
“I’ll give Scott new coordinates in the morning,” Steve promises, taking the bowl from her hands. It needs returning to the Galley, and it is as good a way of marking the end of the discussion as any.  
“Aye, Captain,” Ava murmurs, letting him take it.  
Steve takes his leave, pausing after a few steps and turning back.  
“James,” he says. “His name is James.”  
She nods once, in acknowledgment or approval Steve isn’t sure. 

*

Banner, ever patient in the presence of Steve’s fretful pacing, hums to himself as he works. Despite rolling up his shirtsleeves before kneeling down on the deck he is already soaked from shoulder to thigh in seawater, droplets beading on his wire-framed glasses and weighing down the curls of his greying hair.  
James lets out another cry, sharp and barely audible. It lances through Steve’s ears, and he crouches down beside the ship’s Carpenter, reaching out for James’ hand. The Merman grasps hold of his fingers, grip slippery and fierce, and Steve links their fingers together, as if the pain could somehow transfer from one body to another by touch alone.  
He would, dear God. If he could he would take the pain from James, anything but hear him cry out again.  
“I know. I know it hurts,” Banner murmurs, and Steve grips James’ hand tighter, to keep him from dragging the Carpenter away from the longboat.  
There is blood in the water, a faint stain at first, but the longer Banner works the wider it spreads. Finally, when Steve thinks he can stand it no longer, Banner sits back on his heels, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

“His wounds are infected.” Banner announces at last.  
Steve swears vehemently, rising to his feet and resuming his pacing across the deck.  
Banner stares at the horizon dipping in and out of view as the ship rises and falls with the waves. He seems distracted, but Steve knows better, he is already working out how to proceed with treatment.  
“My best guess is the water going stagnant,” Banner says, looking down at the water clouded with blood and pus. “We’ll need to empty the boat out and scrub it down.  
“But he needs to be in water.” Steve can’t keep the frustration out of his voice. “He’ll die. And if we return him to the sea he’ll die.”  
“No one is suggesting that.” Bruce makes to put on his glasses again, then seeing as they are wet, and there is no part of him dry enough to wipe them on, he perches them on top of his head. “But the longboat needs addressing. Daily water replacement at the very least.”  
“Fine,” Steve snaps. “But he can’t live out of the water.”  
“Well I can’t perform surgery in it!” Bruce snaps back.  
Steve forces his mouth shut, turning to look at James. They will solve nothing by shouting, but it takes a conscious effort to hold his damn tongue. James had been doing so well, that was the worst of it. He had seemed in good spirits the day before, if a little fatigued, and while he had refused food, he had listened well to the stories Luis had to tell him, and his eating habits seemed sporadic enough to not cause concern. And if he seemed tired, if his damp skin had felt a little warm, then surely it was understandable, he was convalescing after all.  
But then Ava had come to Steve’s cabin the hour before dawn with news of the fever, and when he had laid a hand on James’ shoulder, hoping to offer comfort, the Merman had cried out in pain.  
“Surgery.” Steve clings to the word. “What surgery?”  
“I need to cut away the dead flesh.” Bruce sketches out the shape of the wound, the ugly red cracks spilling blood and pus into the water. “And stitch the wound back together.”

Steve swallows, his throat tight, as if it was trying to close up, trying to strangle him. They had come so close, James had been doing well. What cruel God would do this to him? To any of them?  
James makes a soft sound, mouth pulling wide as he tries to speak, but all he can manage is a drawn out sibilant.  
“It’s alright, Jamy,” Steve whispers to him. “We’ll soon have you well.”  
James closes his eyes, grip on Steve’s hand tightening, and heat prickles at his eyes. He has made a promise to the strange creature in his care, and he will keep it.  
“The surgery.” Steve scrubs his free hand over his mouth. “We can lay him on a piece of sailcloth and soak it in water? Keep the tail covered, keep pouring water over it, will that work?”  
Banner chews over the question, nodding to himself. “I think it would. I’ll need boiled wine or vinegar for the debridement.”  
“You’ll have it,” Steve promises.  
Banner gets to his feet, one hand on the rim of the boat to support his aching knees. “Sooner is better than later, Captain,” he says with care.  
“Understood. Go find Luis, tell him it’s for James, he’ll make sure you get you whatever you need.”  
His heart weighs heavy as he watches Banner leave. He can make that promise with Luis. The others he is not so sure about.  
“Jamy?” Steve murmurs, and the Merman’s eyes flicker open. “I have to go, but I will be back soon. Don’t go anywhere, alright?”  
James’ mouth ticks up a little, his grip on Steve’s hand tightening briefly. On some whim he cannot place, Steve kisses his knuckles, quick and firm, before letting go. There is work to be done.

If the crew had any intention of refusing to help, Ava was on hand to look intimidating, but in the end all it took was a disappointed look from Luis to get them in line. In all honesty Steve is surprised at how few crewmen baulked at the tasks given them, and how quickly the ones that did were harried back into line. Perhaps they thought it was better to have a living Merman aboard the ship than to risk the curse of a dying one.  
Barton and his crew climb up the rigging and onto the ratlines, clewing up the sails. They’ll be at a standstill while Banner works, and there is a risk that when it’s done there is not enough wind for the ship to gain momentum again, but Steve is willing to take that risk. The surgery will be dangerous enough as it is without the ship being tossed about by the winds.  
Scott has been quick to produce a length of sailcloth, clearing an area of the deck and laying it down while he sends the twins to fill buckets with seawater. At the bow of the ship a dozen or more crew are waiting to start work on the longboat. For now it is still occupied, James curled up on his side under the surface (and later Steve will curse himself for not thinking, for not sparing James the suffering).  
Luis has David and Kurt bring up a large lidded pot from the Galley, filled with the most pungent substance it has ever been Steve’s misfortune to breathe near. Sharp and sour, even the prevailing sou’westerly can’t keep the fumes at bay. Luis comes up shortly after, a bundle of blankets under one arm and a ladle clenched in his fist. He goes over to Steve, looking a little green around the gills.  
“So we doing this, aye?”  
“We are.” Steve doesn’t say anything further, because what else is there to say? Luis mutters something under his breath, a prayer or a curse, and goes to check on his noxious pot.  
Banner is the last to set foot on the deck, a small metal tray in his steady hands. On it lies a handful of tools - a scalpel, a needle, a set of tongs, thread. Steam rises from them, quickly swept away by the wind.  
“Bring him over,” Banner says quietly, and goes over to join Luis at the canvas.

His boots feel heavy as Steve approaches the longboat, crouching down to look at the Merman curled up in the water. Ava joins him, silent as a spirit, and Steve casts a brief glance up to the Quarterdeck, where Nat watches the horizon.  
“James?” Steve touches the tips of his fingers to the water, flicking them to get his attention. James wakes, regarding him with pale blue eyes. “It’s time.”  
Steve reaches into the water, soaking his jacket to the armpits, and curls his hands under the Merman. James whines as he is lifted up, Ava taking the weight of his tail. Fluid spills from the wound in his side, dripping through Steve’s fingers and onto the deck.  
Banner moves his tools to one side, motioning to them where to lay the Merman down. James winces again as he is laid on damp sailcloth, and does not fight it when they begin to wrap it around him. He doesn’t resist when Drax pushes Kurt away from the sailcloth, kneeling down in his place on the folded edges of cloth.  
James doesn’t resist, but his eyes are wide and afraid.  
“Ava?” Banner calls softly, and she crouches down beside him. “Hold him down by the hips. He will struggle, but you must keep him absolutely still. You understand?”  
“Aye,” she answers, taking a moment to press the palm of her hand to James’ stomach, a reassurance or an apology Steve cannot say, and then rolls onto her side, bracing her weight above the line of his hip where skin becomes scale.  
“Steve, you’ll need to keep his shoulders on the deck at all times. If someone can take his arms, too? Flat on the deck, as still as possible please.” 

For a long moment all is silent, and even the wind chooses that moment to drop. The crewmen who should be working on cleaning out the longboat stand and stare, as if to bear witness. Among them stand the twins, still holding their buckets of seawater, caught in place by what they are seeing, unable to walk away.  
Steve sucks in a breath, air rattling in his throat, and presses his hands down on James’ shoulders. “You need to keep still for us, Jamy,” he whispers, his voice unsteady. “We’ll be as quick as we can.”  
The Merman flinches as Steve pushes him down, but reaches up to grasp his forearm.  
“Arms down, lad,” Banner chides gently, and Steve swallows down whatever words try to escape him as Scott takes James’ hand away, one hand pressing his wrist to the deck while the other holds down his bicep.  
The Merman’s skin is sticky to the touch. On the rare times Steve has touched him he has felt sleek and smooth, like river stones. How meant for touch his arms had seemed, as tactile and inviting as the shimmer of his scales.  
Bruce glances at Luis, who lifts the lid of his pot and dips the ladle into the contents. Steam rises, though the smell seems more muted to Steve now. His ears might as well be stuffed with cloth far all that he can hear, sound muffled by the beating of his own heart.  
“When you’re ready,” he says, and lets his thumb brush against James’ collarbone.

At Banner’s nod Luis pours a ladle full of hot vinegar over the wound. James twists, a long sinuous movement from shoulder to tail, and Steve bears down on him.  
“Hold fast!” he shouts as Scott is pitched over, both hands clinging to the Merman’s arm. Ava lets out a yell, and Drax throws his weight over the tail, slamming it down. The tailfin breaks free of the canvas, fanning out as it rises up, then coming down with a dull slap.  
James tips back his head, mouth open, and though Steve cannot hear the sound he is making he can feel it, feel the shape of it pressing against his ears.  
“Jamy, you have to be still,” he gasps as the Merman writhes against the deck, struggling to find a purchase. Sweat beads on Steve’s brow, trickling down to sting his eyes and be blinked away. “Jamy please!”  
James stops fighting, his body going limp. He closes his eyes, turning his face to the side, as far away as he can be while Steve has a hold of him. Steve watches the rise and fall of his breast, too fast, too shallow.  
“Bruce,” Steve says, low and weary, and it has not even begun.  
Luis takes another ladle of vinegar, giving James a guilty look. “Brace yourself, Vaquita,” he says gently, and sluices it over the wound. It soaks the network of scabs and stitches marring the Merman’s side, trickles over his stomach and drips onto the canvas, staining the cloth a watery red.  
Banner adjusts his grip on the scalpel, running his thumb alongside the wound and pulling the skin taut. When James doesn’t struggle against the pain, he makes the first incision.

If Steve could take back what he said before he would. He was wrong, wrong about the horror of hearing James scream. His silence is far worse.  
As Banner slices into his skin, laying fragments of flesh and skin on the tray beside him, James shudders. Steve can feel them under his palms, the jolt and tremor of pain repressed, of instinct smothered.  
“Shh.” Steve risks moving one hand, the other still splayed over his shoulder, and brushes James’ damp hair out of his eyes. “Shh, it’ll be over soon.”  
“Luis?” Banner murmurs, laying down another scrap of flesh, and Steve returns his hand to its former position, pressing down as the wound is sluiced with cooling vinegar.  
Like the rest of the crew the twins had watched in horror and fascination at first, until Red comes to their senses, smacking their brother’s shoulder and picking up one of the buckets. The kid soaks down the canvas wrapped tail, splashing brine over Drax and Ava in the process.  
Blood flows red over Banner’s fingers, drops spilling onto the wet sailcloth and blossoming like poppies.  
“Shh,” Steve whispers, pressing his forehead to James’. He can’t think of anything else to say, any comfort other than the mindless shushing of a mother to a restless babe in arms. “Shh.”

There is a longboat to be scrubbed out, but not one of the crew sets to work. They do not stand idly by, do not mutter and gossip and heckle. They watch, huddled together in groups of three and four, flinching each time a sound escapes James’ bared teeth, until they cannot watch anymore.  
The hands holding the Merman down begin to gentle. Ava presses her cheek to James’ hip, her face turned to the deck, and hums under her breath even as her hands hold him fast. Drax tucks sailcloth neatly in place, covering the expanse of his tail. Even Kurt, the most wary of the strange creature among them, crawls over the soaked deck and clasps James by the hand. He does not lace their fingers together in the manner that Steve has often done, but holds them palm to palm, their thumbs interlocking, the same as he would with any of the crew.  
Banner sits back, nodding to Luis to flush out the wound, and takes off his glasses long enough to rub the sweat from his brow with the roll of his shirtsleeve before putting them back on.  
“I need to be sure I take out all the dead tissue, or the wound will only fester again,” he explains, to himself or his audience Steve cannot say. “Which means I need to take out living tissue. Then I can stitch him up.”  
No one answers, so he flexes his fingers, readying his scalpel, a bends down to make another cut.  
Up on the Quarterdeck, Natasha has her spyglass raised to starboard. “Sails!”

“Black sails!”  
Steve curses, low and vehement. When he pulls back a little, far enough to see James’ face, his eyes are open but unfocused. Damn their misfortune.  
“Jamy?” Steve cups his hand under the Merman’s chin, and the fog clouding his eyes seems to evaporate. “I have to go.”  
James lets out a strained sound, body twitching, and Steve aches with it, cupping his face in both hands. “I’ll be back, I swear.” He looks over to Luis, helpless, and he drops the ladle in the pot, scrambling over on hands and knees to take Steve’s place.  
“Hey, Vaquita.” Luis cradles the nape of James’ neck with one hand, shifting until the Merman’s head is in his lap. “Cap’s gotta go do Captain things, but he’ll be back, don’t you worry.”  
Steve hauls himself to his feet, legs cramping, and nods to Banner to keep working before racing across the deck as fast as his protesting body will take him. He clatters up the steps to the Quarterdeck, over to where Nat is waiting.  
“Bearing southeast,” she says, handing him the spyglass.  
Steve puts the glass to his eye, tracking the horizon until he sees it. Black sails.  
“That’s not some frigate,” Steve says slowly, lowering the glass. “A ship-of-the-line?”  
“Looks that way.” Nat’s lips are pursed tight. Scared. A warship.  
“How fast can we set sail?” Maybe if they’re quick, they can catch the prevailing wind, loose their pursuer on the run to… where would they run to?  
“Not fast enough.”  
Steve hands the spyglass back to her. “Any chance it’s just passing?”  
“Clint?” Nat looks up, and Steve finally notices Barton up in the rigging.  
“Changed course when it spotted us,” Clint shouts down, and Steve curses sharply, stamping his boot on the deck.  
“Yeah.” Clint squints at the horizon. “We’re so fucked.”

Banner doesn’t flinch when Steve clatters across the deck towards him, boots ringing hollow on the salt-crusted boards. He lays down a strip of bloody tissue on his tray with steady hands and makes another incision, indifferent to the Captain kneeling on the deck beside him.  
“Captain?”  
“How much time do you need?” Steve asks, his voice lowered.  
Pietro chooses that moment to pour another bucket of water over the sailcloth, skittering back when the water splashes him.  
“I need to remove all the necrotic tissue,” Banner says, calm and even. “And stitch the wound closed. Then work out some kind of clean dressing that won’t decay in saltwater.”  
Steve clenches his fist rather than try and punch a hole in the deck. “How. Much. Time?”  
Bruce pauses, looking at Steve over his glasses. “How much time do I have?”  
“Less than half an hour.” Steve presses his knuckles to the wet sailcloth, feeling the resistance of dense muscle underneath. “There is a warship bearing down on us. You need to work faster.”  
“And then what?” Ava interrupts. “We leave him laid out here while they try to board us?”  
For a brief, dreadful second Steve’s thought spiral out of control. He might as well try to catch a waterspout than grasp any thread of reasoning. He takes a breath. Holds it until it burns. Exhales.  
“One problem at a time,” he tells her, before turning back to Bruce. “Work faster.”  
Steve rises to his feet again, turning in a circle to make sure everyone’s eyes are on him. On James.  
“We are being hunted,” Steve shouts. “The ship is bigger than us, faster than us, and we cannot outrun it.” He stops, the weight of it all pressing down on him. “Prepare to be boarded.”

To Steve’s relief the crew take to arms immediately. He stalks around the ship after them, barking orders like a rabid dog before sending Barton and his men up the shrouds and onto the masts ready to cut loose the sails. Their pursuer will have to come to a full stop to board them, and a bigger ship is a heavier ship, faster once it is underway, but slow to get up to speed. It’s not much, but they’ve worked with less.  
The gunners he sends down below decks, grabbing the twins before they can follow.  
“Not you,” Steve warns as Red tries to wriggle out of his grip.  
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Pietro points out, looking too familiar with the experience of being scruffed.  
“Get every bucket you can find and fill them with seawater.” Steve has no idea what he’s saying until it is said. “Take them down to my quarters, quickly now.” He lets them both go, and Red looks at him like he has gone quite mad.  
“Aye,” Pietro mumbles, dragging his twin away.  
“To arms!” Steve yells at anyone not occupied with a task, and returns to where James lies. Luis is still cradling the Merman’s head in his lap, while Scott handles the ladle in his stead. James lies motionless, his breathing shallow but steady, and at a nod from Steve, Drax and Ava take their leave. They are the fiercest fighters of the whole crew, and he needs them armed and ready.  
“Tick tock, Mr Banner,” Steve calls, stopping long enough to clasp Luis’ shoulder.  
“Patience is a virtue,” Bruce replies, pushing a threaded needle into the gaping wound in James’ side.

Up on the Quarterdeck Nat no longer needs a spyglass to view the ship. When Steve joins her, he can count every last sail stretched taut by the wind.  
“Raise the flag,” Steve orders, and at the stern of the ship a crewman lets their colours fly, the star whipping back and forth as the wind rises.  
“No mistaking us for a merchant ship now,” Nat mutters, both hands gripping the gunwale.  
Steve offers no answer, measuring the distance between them with a practiced eye. The ship-of-the-line shows no sign of slowing or changing direction.  
“Nat-”  
“To the last,” she cuts him off. “Remember?”  
“Aye,” Steve murmurs. “To the last.”  
She sucks air between her teeth, looking up at the sheets. “Whatever you’re planning, now’s the time to do it.”  
The ship is close enough to see the men swarming along the rails. Any cannonfire from this distance would miss them, and at least with the sails clewed up they can’t be ruptured by shot. But the ship will be upon them any moment, and Steve has no time left to spare.  
“Captain?” Nat hisses, and Steve makes for the main deck at a run.

“Bruce?” Steve drops down beside him in a crouch. “Time’s up.”  
“A few more minutes,” Bruce says calmly, and how can a man so rattled by weevils in a barrel of ships biscuits be so calm now.  
“We don’t have a few minutes,” Steve snaps. “Luis, help me lift him!”  
Bruce opens his mouth to argue, the words dying when he sees black sails loom over the side of the ship, blotting out the sun. The approaching ship is the length of the Nomad and almost half again, bearing twice the crew and more guns than Steve dare count.  
“Oh,” Luis says weakly, wrapping his arms around James’ chest and lifting him off the deck. Steve gathers up as much of the sailcloth wrapped tail as he can, the tailfin coming loose and dragging along the ground.  
“To my quarters!” Steve calls. “Quickly!”  
Bruce grabs his tray and follows as they drag James below the Quarterdeck, Scott running ahead of them to open the doors along the narrow passage.

Red lets out a shriek as the cabin door bursts open, Luis reversing into the room. He knocks over a bucket as he shuffles backwards, and Steve looks down to see the twins had taken him at his word. There are buckets of seawater everywhere, and every last bucket and pan and bowl on the whole ship must be on the floor of this room.  
“Clear the desk!” he shouts, and the twins step around the buckets to get there before him, sweeping the books and charts and writing implements to the floor.  
Every other step sends another bucket spinning, either by Luis or Steve or the drag of James’ tail. Luis hauls James onto the desk, laying him out across the surface. His tail still trails on the floor, the fin spread out on the sodden rug.  
Steve gives James a last look, in case it really is the last, but his words are for Banner. “Finish it!”  
Banner, off-balanced by the arrival of the pirate ship, and soaked in blood and pus from finger to elbow, manages a hoarse “What?”  
“Did I misspeak?” Steve yells. “Finish it!”  
He pulls a pistol from his belt and Banner takes a step back, hands raised, and Steve wants to ask _Do you think so little of me, old friend?_ He turns to Pietro, thrusting the gun at him.  
“Take this,” he snaps. “Anything comes through that door that isn’t me, shoot it.”  
“C-Captain?” Pietro stammers, and Red reaches over to take the pistol instead.  
“Aye, Captain,” Red says, voice firm.  
“Good lad.” Steve grabs Luis by the arm, pulling him to the door. “Bolt the door behind us. Barricade it with whatever you can,” he shouts, and slams the door shut behind him.

_There’s naught upon the stern, there’s naught upon the lees_  
_Blow high, blow low, and so sail we_  
_But there’s a lofty ship to wind’ard and she’s sailing fast and free_  
_Down along the coast of High Barbary_

_\- The Coast of High Barbary_


	4. The Proposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Pirate city, and what would happen if they brought James to that city? He would be gutted and quartered like a fatted calf, every scale plucked from his tail and traded for the gems they so resembled.

In his former life (and oh how that makes him feel like a ghost, haunting the seas where the man he could have been drowned), Steve had been raised on tales of Pirates. He was a rarity among the crew, his mother had seen fit to teach him his letters before she went and died, and of an evening, if the opportunity arose, he would read aloud to the others the latest reports of Henry Avery and his Pirate fleet. As the years passed the stories grew wilder, more shocking, and the names behind the tales blurred and mingled with those heroes and villains in the books Steve hoarded amongst his few possessions.   
It seems so unbearably naive to look back at the boy he once was, how he had devoured those stories; a fraternity of free men, plundering the holds of the rich and scattering treasure along the shore like Robin Hood of the sea. The truth of it was bitter, too bitter to stomach.   
Brothers, the stories had called them. Brothers. And every last one of them would change his heart for a handful of gold.

Steve climbs up onto the deck slowly, hands clasped behind his back. Panic spreads like sickness on the close confines of a ship, and if he shows no fear then neither will the crew, and he needs them to hold fast.   
The oncoming ship, realising that there is no chase to be had, has clewed up its main sails and is coming alongside them. Far greater in length and height and sail, and bearing more guns than Steve has crewmen, it towers over them, close enough to fire their cannons, but the gun ports are all closed.   
Nat waits on the Quarterdeck with a spyglass. She holds it to her chest rather than her eye, frowning at the ship. At the stern flies a black flag, a red skull crested with serpents; _the Insight_. He knows that flag, knows that ship and her Captain.  
“Pierce,” Steve murmurs.  
“What the fuck does he want?” Nat speaks for him. For all of them.  
On the opposite deck Steve can see the man in question, leaning over his gunwale and looking down at them. He raises his hat to Steve, a tricorn that sits neatly atop his wig of white-blond curls.  
“Parlay?” Pierce shouts down to them, and Steve nods back.  
“Let’s find out.”

Alexander Pierce, Captain of the Pirate ship Insight, must have read the same books that Steve did. Her certainly dresses the part of a Pirate Captain, in a long frock coat of ashen blue and a feather-topped hat. Steve has seen outlandish costumes in his time, but Pierce is as sleek and elegant as a dove, and makes him feel like a dull, lumbering creature in comparison.   
Steve returns to the main deck, Nat following close behind. He rests his hands on his hips and sucks air between his teeth as a plank is lifted across from the lower deck of Insight, linking the two ships together. There is a murmur of dissent from the crew, and he hisses at Luis to be quiet when he suggests just giving the thing a nudge when Pierce is halfway across, see if they can tip him into the ocean.   
It is a pretty tempting idea.   
“Steady, lads,” Steve murmurs. “Stand fast.”  
Pierce is preceded by a handful of his men, sour-faced and clutching their weapons to their chests. They must think themselves Naval officers, the way they prance about. It turns Steve’s stomach to watch.  
Pierce himself saunters along the gangplank, one hand tucked away in his pocket, more to show off the cut of his brocade waistcoat and matching jacket than anything.  
He steps onto the deck, casting a disparaging look upon the crew, and turns to Steve with a too-bright smile.   
“Steven.” Pierce looks around again. “Still sailing with this-”  
“Alexander,” Steve cuts him off, earning himself a scowl. “Yes.”  
“Some new faces, I see,” he adds. “A few absences too. What happened to your Quartermaster?”  
“Retired.” Steve inclines his head towards Nat. “Nat is Quartermaster now.”  
“Hm.” Something catches Pierce’s eye, and he strides across the deck like he owns the damn ship. It’s quickly apparent what caught his interest, drawn to the scent of blood like a wolf.  
The blood, James blood, is still fresh, slowly soaking into the wooden boards. There are scraps of flesh, some blackened and others a visceral red, scattered in the mire, and Steve would sooner cut off Pierce’s hand than let him touch them. He rests his palm on the pommel of his sword, ignoring Nat’s warning fingers on his elbow, and Pierce’s men shift pointedly, hands moving to their weapons.  
Pierce turns to Steve, smile wide and sharp as a blade. “Caught you at a bad time?”

When there is no reply, Pierce continues his circuit of the deck, looking over the crew with a critical eye. Most of them stare right back, shoulders tense, waiting for the order to attack. He stops at the longboat, peering into the murky water and grimacing before looking back at Steve again, eyebrows raised. “Laundry day?” he asks, not even trying to hide his amusement. “Well, I stand corrected. All this time calling these… river rats-”  
“You seemed in a big damn hurry to catch up to us,” Steve interrupts, he’ll not hear a word against his people, Parlay be damned. “So how about you say your piece, then get off my ship?”  
Pierce purses his lips, making a soft little tsk sound, but lets it drop. That alone is enough to send alarm bells ringing. A prideful man, why would he let someone as lowly as Steve speak to him like that?   
Pierce ambles back to where Steve waits, and makes a show of tugging at his ear, choosing his words. “Perhaps we can take this somewhere private?”  
Steve’s quarters currently contain the Carpenter, a Merman, two kids, and an unspecified number of buckets. There will be no meetings in there.  
“Anything you have to say to me,” Steve raises his voice a little. “You can say to my crew.”  
There is a chorus of mumbles and shuffling of feet, the crew getting a little pugnacious at Steve’s words. Drax stamps his feet on the deck, making the boards shake ominously.   
Pierce takes a last look around at the crew, taking in their jeers and pride with something almost like avarice, before he sweeps his hands out, sketching a sarcastic little bow.   
“As you wish.”

Where James’ blood soaks into the deck no man stands. The crew, through fear or respect or some confused, uncertain mix of the two, keep their distance from it. No one tries to soak up a little blood in a cloth to bottle up and sell next time they make shore. No one gathers up the scraps of flesh, relics of an impossible creature to preserve in brandy. What does Pierce think he is walking towards? The scene of a flogging? The final moments of some luckless crewman keel-hauled for his crimes and left on the deck to breathe his last? Or does he see what he most desires, an open space surrounded by curious ears, a natural amphitheatre with a captive audience?  
“My friends,” Pierce begins, and Nat lets out a derisive snort. Pierce glances her way, but continues unabated. “Have you noticed how crowded the sea has become?”  
There is a low murmur among the crew, they might find truth in his words but no one willing to say such a thing out loud.  
“Why less than a week ago, my own ship was set upon-” Pierce’s lip curls in a sneer. “- by a Privateer.” He waits for some spark of outrage, of defiance. Finding none he continues. “We sank that ship to the bottom of the sea.” There is a chorus of cheers from his own men, coming a shade too early to be spontaneous, and Steve casts a wary glance towards them. They still stand to attention, watching every move Pierce makes. Waiting for something.  
Pierce starts to stalk in a circle, picking out crewmen from the crowd to direct his words to as he passes. He belongs on the stage, not the sea, but then couldn’t that be said of all the famous Pirates? Are they not all performers to the last?  
“These hired hands, these commissions with their letters of marque,” Pierce sneers. “They don’t follow the Pirate Code. They don’t care for our ways.” His voice rises, a performance of ire. “They sail for Britain, for France. They steal away the plunder of Spanish ships and Dutch and return it to their masters, to line their pockets while we all go hungry.”   
Pierce jabs a thumb to his chest, and Steve wonders if the man has ever known hunger. Ever cowered in a back alley, shivering in the bitter cold of a Boston winter.  
“They hunt in our waters,” Pierce continues. “Filling their holds with plunder that by rights should be ours, not some Protestants with enough money to raise to a ship and a fool to sail it.”

“Yeah,” someone shouts, Peter from the sound of it. “It ain’t right!”  
There is a mumble, some agreeing with Pierce, others disagreeing on principle, mistrustful of his fine clothes and sweet words. If left unchecked, harsh words will quickly become harsh deeds, and with two opposing crew on deck Steve won’t wait for the first shot to be fired, and steps forward.  
“Crowded?” he calls out, loud and clear. He makes a point of looking to the horizon, turning from portside to starboard. The waters around them are empty, with no ships on the horizon. Steve nods, mouth pursed while a handful of crew look around them and snigger.   
“Yes.” Pierce wheels around to face him. “And it’s not just the seas. When did you last make port, Steven? How much were you charged for the privilege of stepping foot on dry land?” Steve doesn’t answer, and Pierce moves closer, leaning in to speak softly in his ear. “And your hard-won trade? How much did your middleman carve off for himself?”  
Too much. Steve does not indulge him with a reply, but the answer is there, grumbled in taverns and muttered in alleys. Parasites feeding on their labours, the men whisper, overlooking the manner in which they obtained the cargo to begin with.  
“And you have something better in mind?” Steve takes the bait.  
Pierce turns away, his grin wide and delighted. He is the Pied Piper playing a merry tune, and they are all dancing after him.

“Steven,” Pierce calls over his shoulder. “You are a man of letters, are you not? You know the Greek myths.”  
“Yes,” Steve sees no harm in answering.   
“Tell me about the Hydra.”  
Steve glances around, and points to the boy Parker. “Answer him, lad.”  
“Me?” Parker squeaks, then clears his throat. “Uh. Well. The Hydra is a big… a big sea snake.” Parker looks at his friend Ned beside him, who nods encouragingly. “With… with nine heads. Or six. Or fifty. I mean maybe it started with six, but people kept chopping its heads off until there were fifty.” Parker shrugs, fingers clasping together. “That’s what happens when you chop off one of its heads. Two grow back. I don’t know if they’re half the size of the first one, or-”  
“That’s enough, lad,” Steve says firmly. “Thank you.”  
Parker starts to say something more, but he is drowned out by Pierce.  
“My proposal, if you will do me the honour of listening, is thus.” Pierce pauses, savouring his audience watching in rapt attention. “A brethren of Pirates, a Hydra. One head speaks to France, with a syndicate of Privateers to do their bidding. Another to England, to Spain, to the Dutch. And all that they give us we will pass on to you.”

A silence falls as Pierce lets his words sink in, and he begins to walk a circuit again, head raised, hand tucked into his trouser pocket. Round and around the bloodstain, his boots skirting the darkening edge.  
“Why, you’d need a free port for all that?” someone asks, and Steve can’t place the voice. It’s not one of his men, for all his trouble with their names. He glances at Pierce’s men, and wonders which of them spoke.  
“Yes, we would,” Pierce agrees. “And we have one, Port Royal. Even as we speak the foundations are being laid. A city, a Pirate city.”  
“Jamaica is in the hands of the British,” someone shouts. Steve searches for the speaker. Who was that?  
“The port was abandoned by the British in ‘92. Our spies tell us they have relocated to Port Antonio. Their efforts will be unsuccessful, I guarantee it.”  
“And what if the British come back?” Now that voice Steve can place. Peter, taking the bait.  
“We will sink them to the bottom of the sea!” Pierce shouts, defiant and proud. “We will be a force unmatched by any British fleet, or Dutch, or Spanish. We will be an Armada, a nation, our numbers too great for them to conquer. Mark my words, for we will be unstoppable.” He pauses. “But for this to happen, we must all join together.”  
Pierce turns on his heel, walking back the way he had come, looking to every man in turn. “Join us. Join us and we will give to you our own letters of marque. We will give you the schedules of the richest merchant ships. We will supply you with all the freshwater and salt pork you need when you return to the great city of Port Royal. Find those ships, fill your hold with their goods and return to us, and we will pay you in gold, more gold than you can spend. The more you bring us, the greater the prizes we will send you after.” He stops before Nat, looking her up and down. “No more dealing with fat, complacent local merchants. No more counting coppers and wondering how to feed those hungry, hard-working men.”

Pierce’s eyes, palest blue, seem to burn. How many ships has he boarded, forswearing peace, and given this speech? How many men have fallen under his spell?  
When Nat does not yield Pierce turns away, looking for someone more easily swayed. Peter stands directly opposite them, Drax at his side, and Pierce sees the weak link in Steve’s crew. He makes a straight line towards him, arms opening, and walks right through the bloodstain.  
A shudder passes through the crew, old superstitions and fireside tales lingering in the marrow in their bones. Kurt utters something, garbled words in a tongue Steve doesn’t understand but Nat does. He starts chanting something that almost sounds like a cradle song, a melody to lull babies to rest, but gasped and stuttered in such a panic that it only makes those around him more fearful.  
Steve curses, low and furious. In all Pierce’s talk the men had forgotten the creature hidden below deck.   
A Pirate city, and what would happen if they brought James to that city? He would be gutted and quartered like a fatted calf, every scale plucked from his tail and traded for the gems they so resembled. Or worse, he might be kept alive, a curiosity to be gawked at and studied.  
Steve opens his mouth, choking on his own horror, but someone else speaks first.

“So, uh, can I ask one thing?” Luis steps out of the circle, careful not to touch the stain, and Pierce turns to him.  
“Of course,” he says, smile fixed in place.  
“So when we come into port you’re gonna give us the schedule of a ship, right? Where it’s sailing from, the places it’s gonna stop to resupply, what kind of cargo it’ll have?” Luis cocks his head to one side. “You’ll do all that, right?  
“That’s right,” Pierce confirms, his grin does not falter, for he has not traded words with the Ship’s Cook before. The whispering between the men falters and stops, hushed arguments under impatient breaths cut short, and as one the crew take a sudden interest in what their Cook has to say.  
“Okay, good.” Luis licks his lips. “Where’s the fun in that?”  
There is a rumble, a tide of muttering that washes over the crew. Pierce takes a step towards Luis, boot leaving an imprint in James’ blood and making Kurt launch into another verse of his cradle song.  
“Excuse me?” Pierce sneers.  
“I mean it looks like you’ve got this whole system set up, and you’re not going to let us pick our own plunder. I mean that would be chaos, right? Everyone would want the big merchant ships and no one’s gonna touch the little ones. Like I said.” Luis shrugs. “Where’s the fun in that? We’d just be… gundogs or something, wouldn’t we? Like you know those British kings from the olden days? They go into the woods on their horses an’ all their men and go looking for boar and deer and the like. Shoot them with a bow and arrow and then send their dogs to finish the job. So, like, we ain’t hunting. We’d just be your gundogs, right? Just going the places you tell us to, bringing back your shit, is that right?”  
Pierce’s smile freezes. “You would be well compensated for your efforts.”  
“Yeah, but.” Luis shifts from foot to foot. “What if a ship goes off schedule, or gets sunk in a storm, and we come back empty handed? What happens then?”  
Scott, standing a few men down from Luis, nods rapidly. “Yeah! Would we still get paid?”  
Pierce blinks rapidly, trying to keep up. “No, of course you wouldn’t.”

The moods sours, and the murmuring among the crew becomes a loud rumble.   
“This percentage we’re supposed to pay.” Steve nearly gives himself a crick in the neck from turning so sharply. That was _Ned_. “Is that a fixed amount, or will it ever change? Because if you start raising your prices then we’d all be…” he gives an awkward little laugh. “Well, we’d all be screwed.”  
The kid is smart, smarter than Steve has given him credit.   
“They’re going to say no,” Nat murmurs in Steve’s ear as one by one the crew start firing questions at Pierce, about being sent too far north or too far south. “You’re going to put it to a vote and they’ll say no.”  
“They fought hard for their freedom,” Steve answers softly, keeping his eyes ahead and his expression neutral. We all have. “Some things are worth more than gold.”  
Nat’s mouth twists up, eyeing Pierce’s crew, who are starting to look unnerved. “Not to those men.”  
“And what happens when we refuse?” Steve folds his arms across his chest. “Where do we go when Pierce owns the sea?”  
There is no answer to that, so Steve clears his throat and stamps his boot against the deck, calling the crew to attention.  
“We will put it to a vote!” Steve shouts, and the crew quiet down, leaving a harried-looking Pierce with drying blood on his boots. “All in favour of joining this… Hydra, say aye.”  
There is a long, awkward silence. Pierce glowers at Steve.   
“Right,” Steve nods, tamping down on the pride tightening his throat. “All against?”  
The roar of dissent is almost deafening, the whole crew pumping their fists in the air and stamping their feet, crying out ‘Nay!’ in a single, defiant voice.  
“Well.” Steve turns to Pierce, and this time lets his pride show. “You have your answer.”  
Pierce snarls at him, suddenly aware that he is surrounded by a riled crew, with only a handful of his own men to protect him. He retreats, stamping through the tacky pool of blood back to the gangplank, pausing long enough for a few parting words.  
“Mark my words, Steven,” he hisses. “You will starve, adrift, when I am done with you. You think we will stop at Port Royal? When I am done there will be nowhere left for you to turn, no port that will welcome you, no harbour master who will take your cargo.”  
“We’ll manage,” Steve says softly, then speaks up for the crew’s ears. “Thank you, but the answer is no. Now get off my ship.” 

Whatever Pierce’s intentions might be, conflict is not one of them, at least not today. Steve has no doubt in his mind that, the next time they meet, it will be under a barrage of cannon fire.  
The Nomad, for all its merits, would not last five minutes in a battle against the Insight. Outmatched and outgunned, and Steve can only hope that such a day will never come.  
With a sharp nod, Pierce’s men make for the gangplank, returning to their ship. Pierce himself pauses beside Steve, but does not turn to him, his gaze fixed on his ship.  
“You’re making a mistake,” he says lightly.  
“Not from where I’m standing,” Steve answers without thinking.  
Pierce smiles, small and oddly genuine. He touches the brim of his hat to Nat and gets a tight smile for his effort, and returns to his ship.  
Luis takes a half step towards the gangplank, but Scott puts an arm out, effectively stopping him.   
The plank is drawn up, and the ship slowly pulls away.   
The crew mill around a little, no one quite willing to put their back to the unknown, least of all Steve.  
“Cap,” Nat whispers, and he pulls himself together. There’s work to be done.  
“Scott!” Steve shouts, loud enough to make him flinch. “I ordered that longboat scrubbed out hours ago.”  
“Aye, Captain,” Scott calls back, looking relieved to have something to do.  
“And get this deck swabbed,” Steve adds. The darkening blood is making him feel uneasy.   
No one leaps into action, too afraid of what magic lies in Merman blood.  
“On it, Captain.” Ava steps forward, and then for good measure snags Kurt by the arm, hauling him after her in a search for scrubbing brushes and buckets. She will struggle to find one, they are all in Steve’s quarters.

The thought is a sobering one. Beneath Steve’s feet James is either alive and in pain, or…  
He shies away from the notion, like flinching from the spark of gunpowder at the firing of a musket. What an awful thing for a creature of sea and sky to breathe his last encased in wood, shut away from the waves and salt air. It would be unforgivable.  
Steve sucks in a sharp, fortifying breath of sea air, and calls to Ava. “Come with me.”  
She gives Kurt a hard stare, fixing him in place until she comes back, and follows Steve as he goes to his quarters. Steve is broad-shouldered enough to find the passageway on the narrow side, but she moves effortlessly, and though she must have questions she makes not a sound.  
“Pietro?” Steve taps at the door to his cabin. “Let me in.”  
There is a scuffle, and the unmistakable sound of a bucket getting kicked over. “Captain?”   
“Yes, it’s me,” Steve says, a bite of impatience in his tone. “Let me in.”  
Iron scrapes across wood, and the door creaks open. Water sloshes over the threshold as Steve takes a step into the room, splashing past Pietro and barely taking in the overturned buckets piled in one corner or the rug soaked beyond redemption. He only has eyes for his desk.

James is spread across the weathered oak surface, one arm hanging limply down to the floor, the other folded across his chest. His tail, still wrapped in sailcloth, hangs from the other end, the bloodstained canvas trailing across the floor like a bridal train. Banner sits in Steve’s chair, head resting in his hands. He looks tired and drawn in the flickering lantern light. The slump of his shoulders makes Steve’s heart stop.  
But Red trickles the contents of a bucket over the cloth, and the list of the ship sends ripples across the water pooled around their feet.  
“He’s alive,” Steve murmurs, as if saying it would make it so. Banner straightens up, pulling his glasses down from where they rest on the top of his head and nodding.  
“He’s a tough one,” he says, weary and fond. “I’ll give him that.”  
Ava pushes past Steve, stepping over the buckets nimbly as she goes over to the desk. She takes James’ hand, dangling like a corpse from a noose, in hers, clasping it for a moment before laying it with the other on his breast.  
James stirs, tail twitching under the weight of the wet sailcloth, and lets out a low sound of pain. Steve’s feet move against his will, bringing him to the desk and to the Merman’s side. Ava moves back a little, letting him take her place as James’ eyes flicker open, his gaze clouded. He makes a sound, a loose sibilant tucked into his cheek, and lifts his hand a scant inch from his chest.  
“I’m here, Jamy,” Steve soothes, grasping his trembling hand and linking their fingers together, palm to palm. It isn’t enough, not by far, but hope and fear tangle in his throat, strangling any words of comfort he might have to offer. He cannot even muster an answering smile as James moves against his fingers, mouth twitching up as if he knows Steve by the shape of them alone.  
Steve’s presence, however mute and fumbling, seems to soothe him. James’ eyes close, his grip on Steve slackening, and a moment later he is asleep.

For an awful moment Steve fears that James had only waited for his return to die. That he had clung to life too long, that he had suffered needlessly, waiting for him to return. Steve presses his fingers to the delicate skin of James’ wrist, and feels a thready pulse, like the lapping of waves against the ship’s hull. He lets out a stuttering breath, his own lungs failing him, and were they alone he would press his lips to James’ knuckles and swear foolish oaths that he could never keep.  
But they are not alone, so he lowers James’ hand to his breast, careful to rest it just so before turning to the others. None of them comment on his actions, and for that Steve is grateful.  
“Ava, take Pietro with you. I want that deck scrubbed by six bells,” Steve says quietly.  
“Aye, sir.” Ava picks up a couple of empty buckets and nods to Pietro to come with her. The boy very carefully puts Steve’s borrowed pistol on top of an upturned bucket and follows after her.  
Steve takes a moment to survey the room. The books that had been swept off the desk are now lying in three inches of water, completely ruined. The rug he can dry out but he doubts it will be the same.  
He finds that he does not much care. The maps will dry well enough, and the books can be replaced.   
“Red?”   
The kid stops trickling water, hefting the bucket by its rope handle. “Sir?”  
“Go up and help with the longboat.” Steve reaches across the desk and takes the bucket from them. “Let me know when it’s ready and full, Banner and I will bring him up.”  
They don’t let go of the handle until Steve gives them an encouraging nod. “Off you go, lad.”  
Red hesitates, but yields, giving the pair of them an odd little bob of the head before heading out, pulling the door closed behind them.

“Lad,” Banner huffs once Red has gone. There is nothing sharp or cutting in his tone, only weariness.  
“Until we hear otherwise,” Steve reminds him, setting the bucket on the floor, “it’s lad.”  
“Hmm.” Banner takes off his glasses and rubs his stinging eyes. “How long was Nat a Nathaniel?”  
“Until ought seven, if I recall.” There is an overturned stool in the corner, and Steve rights it, bringing it to the desk and swiping away the worst of the water on the seat with his shirtsleeve. “I think Barton is still under the impression she is a he.”  
“A ship is no place for a woman,” Banner sighs, earning a scowl from Steve. “Oh, don’t give me that look, you know what I mean. One woman and a hundred men, you know what comes of that.”  
“Not on my ship it doesn’t,” Steve insists, cold as iron. “Any man who tries will find himself taking a short drop with a sudden stop.”  
“You’ll hear no argument from me there, but not every Captain shares your view.” Banner sets his glasses on his nose again, and starts to collect up his tools. “Speaking of Captains…”  
He looks up at Steve, eyebrows raised, and if that were not clue enough to his meaning, nods his head portside.

Steve hefts up the half-empty bucket Red left him and pours water over the sailcloth, delaying his answer for long enough to get his thoughts in order. “The Insight.”  
“Alexander Pierce?” Banner drops a scalpel on his tray. “What does he want with the likes of us?”  
Steve stifles a groan, shifting on his damp seat and setting the water around his boots flowing out in little eddies. “A consortium of Pirates, commandeering Port Royal for supplies and trade.”  
Banner frowns. “Port Royal is in the hands of the British.”  
“Not anymore. It was abandoned after an earthquake, and the British have gone elsewhere.”  
His tools gathered, Banner has nowhere to put them, so he rests his tray on top of a bucket. “Well that seems a good idea, build your castle on sand and all that.”  
Steve snorts. It’s not funny but he can’t help it. “Not just a castle, but a whole city. One that will issue its own letters of marque.”  
That catches Banner’s attention. “What?”  
“Make no mistake, this isn’t another brethren of the coast,” Steve frowns to himself. “This is consolidation. He claims to have access to manifests from merchant ships, Dutch, British, French, and will pass them on to any Captain who joins him. The only condition is that the goods are brought to Port Royal, for a small commission of course.”  
“Of course.” Banner looks appalled. “You said no, didn’t you?”  
“Put it to vote.” Steve’s mouth twitches. “Nay all round. No one much likes the idea of taking orders, especially not by him.”  
“Easy work for easy pay, at first.” Banner mutters. “And what of the other islands in the Caribbean? With all the Pirates taking their goods to Port Royal and merchant ships routinely boarded, where do they get supplies? From Pierce, and him alone.” He shakes his head. “A stranglehold on sea trade, one that stands to make him a lot of money.”  
“It’s not about money, is it?” Steve has his suspicions, and he trusts Banner’s judgement. “Every hunt undertaken by his design, every prize funnelled through his hands. He’d have control over everything,”   
When it comes down to it, it is never about money. All the ill wrought by one man over another, it’s never really about the money.

They fall into silence, and Steve trickles a little more water over the sailcloth.  
“Don’t lose hope, Steve. There will always be something,” Banner reminds him. “It’s a vast ocean, he cannot watch over it all.”  
Steve hums an assent. They have always been rats hiding under the skirting board, darting out to scoop up choice morsels that fall to the floor. This will be no different.  
“We won’t be the only ones to refuse,” Steve adds. “Pirates are a stubborn breed, and set in our ways. It won’t be long before this Hydra falls apart, these sworn blood-brothers turning on one another over some slight or treasure.”  
Banner snorts, resting his elbows on the edge of the desk and looking down at James. The Merman’s skin is burnished bronze in the light of the oil lamps, the wounds in his side cast in shadows. Steve’s fingers itch to touch, to soothe the pain with gentle caresses. He does not, instead resting his hands on his knees.  
“Will he recover?” Steve asks softly, digging his nails into his thighs.  
“I believe so.” Banner folds his hands, making a place to rest his chin. “But he needs fresher water than what can be stored in a longboat.”  
Steve frowns, scratching at the worn cloth of his trousers. “We could flood one of the holds? Seal it up and fill it? The ship is light, it can take on a little more water without sinking us.”  
“Too dangerous,” Banner says. “The dark and cold would only cause further infection.”  
“And where would we store our plunder, should we ever find any?” Steve adds. “Besides, he needs the sun.”  
Banner nods, as much as he can with his chin on his hands. “Ideally, we would find him a tide pool. Something replenished by the tide daily, but without the trials of the open sea.”

Steve isn’t sure what troubles him more, the thought of James becoming sick again, or of leaving him behind on some deserted island.   
“Steve.” Banner looks at Steve over the stained folds of sailcloth dripping on the cabin floor. “He belongs-”  
“I know where he belongs,” Steve snaps, and feels guilty for snapping. Banner speaks out of kindness, and no doubt he is not the only one to have noticed the gentle touches and quiet affection Steve offers to James. He is only reminding his Captain of the inevitable.   
“Steve,” Banner says, and it’s the pity he can’t stand.  
“He also deserves a chance of surviving,” Steve argues. “If we leave him somewhere now, it would be a death sentence! He is unable to hunt for food or defend himself, and what if he tears his stitches? What if the wound gets infected? You’d let him die for the sake of-”  
“Of course not!” Banner grimaces, hands clenching and pressing down on the desk. “But he can’t stay on this ship.”  
_Why not?_  
How selfish of him to think such a thing. How greedy and petulant, to put James’ life at risk because he… because he doesn’t want to let go.  
“He is remarkable,” Banner says gently. “And unlike anything I have seen in my life. And of course I don’t want him to die, but I also don’t want to see that… beauty… diminished. He’s not a treasure to be hoarded, Steve. Eventually you will have to let him go.”

_Aft on the Quarterdeck the gallant captain stands_   
_Looking out to wind’ard with a spyglass in his hands_   
_What he is a-thinking of we know very well_   
_He’s thinking more of shortening sail than striking the bell._

_\- Strike the Bell_


	5. The Asgard

Steve climbs onto the deck, a crumpled, water stained map under his arm, and turns in a slow circle. The boy Parker and his erstwhile crewmate Ned are making a show of scrubbing the deck, while David and Kurt bicker back and forth over the best stitch to use as they sew up scraps of canvas, but there is no sign of the man he seeks.  
“Barton?” Steve shouts as he looks up, seeing neither hide nor hair of the Sailing Master up in the rigging.  
“Over here, Cap!” Red shouts from the portside rail, and Steve walks over to their side.  
Barton is clinging to the lowest edge of the shrouds, where knotted rope meets the outer curve of the hull. One hand grips the shroud while the other tugs on a length of rope dangling from a block and tackle suspended above him.  
“What’s this?” Steve takes the loose end of rope coiled on the deck, letting it run through his fingers as Barton pulls the other end. “A new pulley?”  
“For the longboat.”   
Barton nods to where James’ boat stands a few feet away. Drax is making a half-hearted effort to empty out the water, but mostly seems to be telling James a long story about one of his tattoos. The Merman looks on with the kind of wild-eyed empathy that suggests he has no idea what’s being said, but doesn’t want to be discouraging about it.  
By habit Steve looks around for Ava or Luis, thinking they must be behind the plan, but they are nowhere to be seen. Barton must have come up with the idea himself.  
“Good,” he says, a little vaguely. “When you’re done come see me for a new course.”  
“Aye,” Barton gives another tug on the rope. “We going somewhere interesting?”  
“Somewhere with tidal pools,” Steve says absently before going to rescue James.

“… and with my enemy defeated, I cut his eye tooth from his mouth with this knife.” Drax gestures with his free hand to the sharp, curved blade at his hip. “And used it to carve this mark on my arm, here.” He taps at a blurry smudge on his right bicep.   
James, tail flip-flopping in the water as he tries to lean closer without pulling his stitches, squints at the blur and gives a pensive little smile.  
“Fine work, is it not?” Drax says proudly. “I could give you one? A tattoo? Many sailors have a Mermaid tattoo, so I could give you one of a human.” Drax laughs, grabbing the hilt of his knife. “I could give you one of me!”  
“Thank you, Drax.” Steve claps him on the shoulder, his palm stinging from the impact. “That will be all.”  
“Yes, Captain.” Drax drops the bucket back in the boat, narrowly missing James’ tail. “It has been a pleasure, friend. Next time I will tell you how I came by this tattoo.” He gestures to another smudge, this time on his rib, and saunters away.  
Steve sets down his map and picks up the bucket, scooping up some water and tipping it over the gunwale. “How are you feeling?” he asks.  
James prods gently at his hip, a little below the angry-looking wound.  
“Good.” James labours through the scant handful of words. “Thank you.”  
It’s not a lie, per se. It’s more that his idea of what is bad is slightly skewed. Bad is shivering with fever. Bad is clasping at his broken skin as if he could hold the pieces of himself together. He still moves with exaggerated care, still takes air in shallow, rapid breaths. Steve scoops up another bucket of water, pitching it back into the sea.

James can manage for periods of time without any water at all. For all Luis calls him Vaquita he is no fish, and can breathe just as well out of water as in. But his tail dries out quickly, the scales losing their lustre, and his skin behaves in much the same way. Even knowing this, Steve is reluctant to empty out too much from the longboat, and aside from tipping the damn thing over it’s impossible to bucket out the contents completely. James shifts around in the remaining puddle, trying to find a position that doesn’t hurt, wincing a little as he does so.  
“You need help?” Steve asks, and James glances up. His eyes say yes, but the turn of his mouth insists no, and he braces himself on the bottom and slides down until his back is flat against the base.   
The benches that rowers would sit in were levered off by Ava and Pietro, days ago when they had scrubbed the boat down, giving him a little more space to move around it. James mostly uses it to lie flat on the bottom of the boat, hair drifting around his head like seaweed, much to Banner’s irritation as his wound should be kept dry.   
The longboat will most likely be useless by the time he’s done with it, but Steve doesn’t want to think about that at present.  
“Cap?” Barton walks over to join them, carrying a fresh bucket of water. “You said something about a new course?”  
“I did,” Steve confirms, moving out of the way so Barton can pour it into the boat.  
Barton hefts the bucket, giving James a nod in greeting. “Hey, pal. Move the tail, would you?”  
James flicks the end of his tail, the fin curling over the side of the boat and brushing Steve’s leg.  
“‘Preciated,” Barton huffs, emptying the water in a steady stream.  
“Isla Mujeres,” Steve says when he’s finished, and hands over the map.  
“We need to resupply already, huh?” Barton hands him the empty bucket before he takes the map, unfurling it and holding it out at arms length. “Or are we going to ground?”  
Steve’s mouth twitches. “What’s the word among the crew?”  
“That Pierce is a conniving bastard who’d sell his own grandmother.” Barton smirks. “Doubt he’d get thirty pieces of silver for his trouble.”  
It’s a comfort to hear that no one regrets turning down the offer to join Pierce’s Pirate Company. More so that there are no whispers to reconsider, or that the Captain did them wrong.  
“No one’s gonna complain about lying low until it all blows over, if that’s what you’re asking.” Barton rolls the map up again, location set in his mind’s eye.  
“It’s one reason,” Steve admits, and he doesn’t miss the way Barton’s gaze flickers to James and back to him.   
“You think Luis’ people will be alright with…” He glances to James again, the concern hanging between them.  
“Luis was.” Steve would be lying if he said he wasn’t worried.  
Concern must show clearly on his features because Barton’s expression softens a little. “They’re good people,” he murmurs.   
“Aye,” Steve sighs, and hopes that it will be enough.

With a task more interesting than carrying buckets of water to hand Barton makes himself scarce, having no qualms with leaving the Captain to do his work. Steve has no qualms with hard work either, and gets on with filling the longboat. He takes the empty bucket over to the new winch, fastening the rope to the handle and dropping it into the waves, a moment later hauling it up again, seawater sloshing over the sides. It will take a dozen or more buckets worth to fill the longboat to his satisfaction, but the company is worth the effort.  
James watches him work, brow creased, and when Steve sets down the bucket for the last time he sits down on his usual crate.  
“You heard Barton and myself talking?” Steve asks, watching the way James’ hands trail through the water, making little waves and eddies. James nods, a terse little up-and-down motion with his chin.  
“We are taking the ship northwest to Cancun, to an island, the home of Luis’ people.” Steve regrets not keeping hold of the map, if only to show him the route. “The island is small, not more than four miles across, with a rocky shore and coral reefs.” Steve pauses, smiling to himself. On their last visit Luis had shown him the old temple, though Steve hadn’t been able to quite grasp the stories that had poured from his mouth like rain, and could not say for certain if she was a goddess of healing or rainbows or war. “There are tide pools all over the island, the people there call them _salinas_. They harvest salt for trade with the mainland. You need something bigger than a longboat if you are to heal, we will find one for you.” Steve gives him an encouraging smile, and the one James answers with is but a pale reflection.   
“You’ll be safe there,” Steve promises. “You’ll be able to swim again.”

The more Steve talks, the deeper James’ frown becomes. Perhaps Steve is choosing his words poorly, for all the Merman seems to understand it is impossible to say exactly how much so when he offers so little in return. Perhaps he is afraid to be among strangers?  
“They are good people, I swear,” Steve insists. “Luis’ kinfolk will welcome you, we will make sure of it.”  
The words are designed to reassure but they only manage the opposite. James’ turns away from him, tucking the loose strands of his hair behind his ears and absently tugging on the ends.  
“James?” Steve asks gently, reaching out to rest a hand on his arm, skin cool and slick. “What troubles you? Are you in pain?”  
James shakes his head sharply. “No,” he mumbles, though the hunch of his shoulders and the curve of his spine say otherwise.  
“Are you sure?” Steve asks, and when James slips under the surface again he can only accept it. He gives James a last light pat, fingers reaching into the water and tapping the sweet curve of his shoulder, and gets to his feet, reaching down to retrieve the bucket.

Cold fingers burst from the water and wrap around Steve’s wrist, clenching painfully tight. Steve drops the bucket, looking back at James, who has thrown his upper body almost completely out of the longboat in his haste, sloshing hard-earned water over the deck. The stitches in his side strain, threatening to break, and Steve hushes him, murmuring wordless reassurances as he tries to work James’ fingers loose.  
“Come back.” James grips him tighter, not giving an inch of ground he’s gained.  
Steve rubs his thumb over the taut white skin of James’ knuckles. “Come back?” he asks, and when James tugs at him he kneels down by the longboat, meeting him eye to eye. “What is it, Jamy?”  
“Come back,” James says again, and Steve is still not accustomed to the sound of his voice, the sharp pitches and low rasps like the tide washing over a pebble beach.  
“I can stay a while,” Steve tells him, moving from kneeling to sitting on the wet deck to show he is willing.   
The last few weeks have been a trial for James, Steve reminds himself. The attack, and then being hauled up onto the ship not knowing to what end. Then the sickness and fever and the cutting of blades, and now when he has finally found some kind of equilibrium, it is all changing again.  
“There is nothing to fear,” Steve promises, and James shakes his head, looking almost bereft. The grip on Steve’s wrist loosens even as James brings his other hand up to join it, staring at Steve’s hand as though he is seeing it for the first time. His fingers move ceaselessly, mapping the swordfighting scars that crisscross Steve’s index finger and thumb, the uneven line of each phalange, broken and reset more times than Steve cares to recall.

“We will bring the men ashore and ground the ship.” Steve begins to sketch out a plan. “There is a long stretch of beach on the western shore that Henry Morgan himself once used, and there we will careen the hull.” Steve twists in James’ grip until their hands face palm to palm, cupped to form the shape of a boat. “We will secure the ship with ropes tied to the masts and wooden props against the hull, and then scrape the hull clean of barnacles and mussels.” He demonstrates by drawing a finger along the back of James’ hand in a sweeping motion. “Banner will no doubt have repairs to tend to, replacing damaged wood and the holes plugged with caulking and canvas. If we can obtain tar from somewhere so much the better”  
James frowns, fingers splaying. “Holes?”  
“Yes.” Steve smooths over his splayed fingers, drawing them in again. He has heard many a song where a plucky crewman has saved his crew with the aid of an awl, or sunk an enemy. “Yes, but do not worry. It takes more than a few holes to sink a ship, even cannon fire is not enough. It would take a man with a sharp axe and little need for air to do such a thing.”  
Steve lets go of James’ hands, and the sense of loss is immediate. He feels clumsy and inarticulate without their weight and motion. What use did he ever have for hands all these years when there was no James to reach for, no books to leaf through and entertain him, or slices of raw fish to feed him?  
“With troubling times ahead, we’ll need every advantage.” Steve clasps his hands in his lap, and it is a poor substitute. “And maybe we can build something a little better than a longboat for you here. Something you can swim around in.”

James sits up suddenly, sending another wave over the side of the boat as his tail twists and thrashes, and the boat will be half-empty if he’s not careful. He grips the edge, the wood under his hands worn smooth, and leans over to stare at Steve with too-bright eyes. Whatever troubles had weighed him down have vanished, gone as fast as they had arrived. Steve recalls the last thing he said, wondering what could have brought about such a difference. It can’t be the promise of something bigger to swim in once they return to the sea, can it?  
Oh. A thought occurs, and Steve almost dismisses it as fancy, but then he does not.  
“James?” Steve asks, trying not to smile. “Did you think I would leave you?”   
He must not have tried hard enough, for James bares his sharp teeth, uttering a soft snarl.   
“Oh, come now,” Steve soothes. “As if I would do such a thing.”  
James hisses again, but this time it is hard to miss the ruddy colour of his cheeks and the jut of his lip. When hissing does not suitably disguise his embarrassment James cups a handful of seawater and flings it into Steve’s face, droplets of water clinging to his beard and catching the sun like diamonds.  
Steve laughs, wiping water out of his eyes, and James slaps his tailfin in the water irritably. He utters a clipped little string of sounds, clicks and teeth-whistles. Steve does not speak his strange tongue but knows when he’s being called an idiot.   
James sinks beneath the surface once more, arms folded, and Steve flicks his fingers over the water, sending out ripples and eddies. It does nothing to coax the Merman back up, so he snags the discarded bucket and gets back to work, his heart lighter than it has been in months, in years.

*

“Sails!” Barton shouts from the upper shrouds. “Black sails!”  
Steve glances up from his book, and finally notices that James had fallen asleep at some point while he was reading. He could also be feigning sleep, finding the book in Steve’s hand rather dull.  
“Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic of literature, Jamy,” Steve tsks.   
All his reproach earns him is a loud snore, so Steve slips a scrap of paper into the book to mark his place and leaves it on the crate, pausing long enough to tug at a strand of James’ hair and get an irritable hiss before going up to the Quarterdeck to see what is to be seen.  
“Black sails,” Barton repeats, clambering down from the shrouds as Steve joins Nat in looking out to the horizon.   
“Out here?” Steve says, a little incredulously. The ship is some two hundred miles east of the coast of Mexico, far from the trade routes of Cuba or the logcutters of Bellis, and the last thing he had expected to see was another ship. Has Pierce’s reach extended so far already? Is the Caribbean Sea his now?  
“It could have mistaken us for a merchant ship.” Nat looks through her spyglass and frowns. “Or one of the… what did they call themselves, Hydra?”  
Nat knows exactly what they’re called, she is just trying to draw Steve’s attention to a potential trap.  
“If only there was some way of letting other ships know we’re not a merchant ship,” Barton muses loudly. “Like a different colour sail or something.”  
“That’s enough, Barton,” Steve sighs. “Fly the colours, let’s see how they respond.”  
Nat clicks her tongue. “Pierce said you’re either with him or against him, right?”  
“He did.”   
Nat’s gaze flicks to the Merman dozing in the longboat. She says nothing, but she doesn’t need to. Things would be a damn sight easier to handle without the rarest treasure of the seven seas on display on the deck. Steve feels like he is walking through the streets of Boston with a full purse and no guards. Exposed, vulnerable, like he has a damned target painted on his back.

Barton sets the flag flying, hoisting it up high and clambering after it, watching the distant ship in something he would swear blind was not trepidation, mostly due to a confusion over what the word ‘trepidation’ even meant.   
The other ship comes about, making to draw alongside them but taking its time about it. It seems they are not under attack, but not out of danger either.  
“Ava!” Steve calls, and though he could swear blind she had not been on deck a moment before, she appears at his side within moments.  
“Captain,” she says softly, eyes on the approaching ship.  
“Take a few men who won’t be missed and ready the guns,” Steve says. The duty would normally fall to Drax and Peter, but with a strange ship on the approach he would rather keep them on deck. A show of strength on deck, cunning and sharp eyes below. “Be ready to fire-”  
-But don’t look like we’re armed and ready,” she finishes. “Aye, Captain.”  
“Keep your ears open,” Steve adds.  
She slips away, and Steve doesn’t need to guess who she takes below with her. He fetches a square of canvas from the stores, a section of topgallant torn in two by a stray cannonball, and carries it out to James’ boat. He shakes out the heavy cloth, shouting to any crew nearby to assist him. Pietro and Red, twitchy and on edge at the approaching ship, come to his aid, taking up an edge of sailcloth at Steve’s instruction and opening it out. It is a fair enough size for what he needs, and drags to the edge of James’ longboat.  
“Jamy?” Steve calls out to him. “Company’s coming, I need you to lie still a while and not make a sound, can you do that?”  
James, who had raised himself out of the water with hands braced on the boats edge, trying to see what was causing so much panic out at sea, lowers himself with a soft grunt of discomfort. He eases back into the water, expression pinched as the movement pulls on his stitches, and lies on his back, head just below the surface. Steve pauses before throwing the sailcloth over him, meeting his eyes.  
“Absolute silence, you understand?” Steve asks, and hopes that he is understood.  
James touches a finger to his mouth, swiping over his coral lips in a diagonal, and Steve lets out a huff of relief.  
“I’ll see you soon,” he murmurs, a promise, a prayer, and hauls the cloth over the boat, covering it from bow to stern. “Quickly!” he calls to the other two. “Secure it.”  
They tug the torn cloth into place, tucking it in as neatly as they can, and Red fetches several lengths of rope with which to tie it all in place.  
“You think this will work?” Pietro asks Steve in a hushed undertone.  
Steve clenches his jaw, fastening another knot. “It has to.”

The strange ship draws alongside them, and the crew gather along the rail to stare. It is unlike any ship Steve has seen, shaped more like an open cargo boat than a seafaring vessel. The squared-off stern is boarded over, no doubt to create a cabin of some kind, while a single, almost outlandishly large mainsail hangs from the lone mast, the yardarm tugging against the wind. It looks like a child’s first model of a ship, its sail a stick punched through a sheet of newsprint.  
“Nor exactly built for speed,” Nat mutters under her breath as its crew hurry about the deck, working to bring the ship to a standstill. The men are almost as strange looking as the ship itself, barrel-chested and bearded, singing call-and-return songs in a low, strange tongue as they work. Though he does not understand the words, Steve knows the songs they are singing, he has sung them a thousand times or more. The words are not important, but the rhythm drives the hands to labour, a hundred bodies moving as one.  
One of the men strides over to the nearside rail of his ship, and from his breadth and bearing Steve guesses he must be the captain. At his side stands a man who could not look more different, slender where he is broad, dark haired where he is blond, clean-shaven where he bears a long, plaited beard. Scowling when his kinsman smiles.

The captain leans over the side, and it is a wonder his grip does not splinter the wood, and sights Steve among his crew.  
“Hei and well-met!”  
Steve wishes he had remembered to put on his hat, but the crew of the strange ship are bare headed too, so he raises his hand in return instead.  
“Ahoy there!”  
Nat gives him a dubious look. “Ahoy?” she whispers, a whole ocean of sarcasm distilled into such a small word.  
“Well what would you have me say?” Steve hisses back.  
“I don’t know, maybe what the hell is wrong with your ship?”  
Across the narrow stretch of water a similar exchange seems to be underway between the Captain and his nightshade companion. The Captain puts a hand on his companion’s chest, the touch gentle, and it is clear that he is aiming for reassurance. From the dour look on the other’s face, it is not working.  
“Hei!” the Captain shouts over again. “Are you planning to fire on us?”  
Steve frowns, and gives a sharp little shake of his head. “Not unless you fire on us first.”  
He thinks of Ava and her men down on the gundeck, waiting for the order to strike.  
“Hardly,” the Captain lets out a guffaw. “No guns.”   
His companion lets out an outraged little yelp. “Don’t _tell_ them!”

The tension in Steve’s shoulders eases a little. “No,” he calls over. “No plans to attack.” He stamps his boot three times on the deck, _Stand down_, and gets an answering thump of an iron shot slammed against the boards, _Aye Captain._  
The Captain seems to relax a little too, folding his arms and leaning against the railing. “So you’re not with this whole red snake business then?” Steve shakes his head, mouth drawn into a tight line. “Good. We encountered a nasty bunch two weeks back, the _Lemurian Star_. By Odin they were a bunch of bastards, wouldn’t take no for an answer, not until Fandral over there hung him over the prow by his bootheel.”  
The Captain points to another man along the deck. “Still got the boot!” he announces proudly.  
“Unfortunate business,” the Captain agrees. “I bet they’re not even from Lemuria.”  
“There’s no such place as Lemuria,” his companion hisses. “I told you.”  
“Of course there’s such a place,” the Captain gives him a wide not-in-front-of-the-Pirates smile. “Otherwise it wouldn’t have a name. You can’t name things that aren’t there.”  
“Thor’s brain,” his companion seethes. “There, see what I did?”  
Thor, if that is his name, claps the man on the back hard enough to almost send him over the side. Steve suspects that it is no accident.  
“I hate you, brother,” the man hisses, straightening up and smoothing his hair back.  
“Nonsense, you love me,” Thor retorts before returning his attention to Steve. “Well then, permission to come aboard?”  
Steve’s first instinct is to refuse. The ship is slow-moving, built for cargo rather than speed, and they could easily outmatch it, they could be a dot on the horizon before the crude vessel had even raised its sail.   
He surprises himself.  
“Three may come aboard,” Steve calls back. “No more.”  
Thor tilts his head to one side, making a show of humouring him. “Three it is then, no more or less.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Nat hisses as Thor and his crew set a board between the two ships.   
“You heard what they said,” Steve murmurs back. “They’re not interested in joining this Hydra consortium either.”  
“Of course they’re not,” Nat’s voice pitches up a little. “They’re not even real Pirates.”  
“Shh,” Steve flicks his hand up a little, nodding across to where Thor checks that the board is secure before stepping on. He carries no pistol or sword, but an axe hangs from his hip, heavy and ornately carved. “We need allies, Nat. In our position we can’t afford to be too selective.”  
“Yes we can,” Nat’s tone is clipped, a warning.  
“You know what I mean.”  
He steps forward to greet Thor, who steps down from the plank, followed by his ill-tempered companion, and a third member of his crew, a dark-skinned man with the strangest eyes Steve has ever seen. He carries a long staff, scratching it along the plank in front of him as he walks.  
“I am Thor, Captain of the _Asgard_. This is my brother, Loki, and my Quartermaster, Heimdall.” Thor moves over to offer aid to Heimdall, who asks for it by extending his hand and waiting for Thor to place his arm beneath it, rather than reach out to him. He claps the Quartermaster’s hand, speaking loudly. “A Brig, my friend. Two masts, and thirty or more crew on deck. There is a covered rowboat to your left, maybe ten paces, and a mast with rope piled around it some five paces ahead.”  
Heimdall nods, releasing Thor’s arm, and drags his staff along the deck, thumping it against the boards and listening to the hollow sound it makes.

“Steve Rogers, Captain of the Nomad,” Steve introduces himself. “This is my Quartermaster, Nat.”  
Thor inclines his head politely, looking over his shoulder when a handful of Steve’s crew let out a collective sound of surprise, skittering out of the way of Heimdall’s staff. There is something birdlike in the tilt of the man’s head, a distance in his golden eyes.  
“He is…” Two and two meet like a flint and frizzen. He has seen men with glass eyes before, but never forged in gold. “He’s blind?”  
“Aye,” Thor regards Steve proudly, like a dog that has mastered a clever trick. “But he sees all.”  
“Well, that makes sense,” Nat mutters, turning to check where the third member of their party has wandered off to.  
Loki, Thor had called him, though no title had been given along with the name. Steve glances around quickly, and when there is no sign of him stops and takes a slow, careful look around the ship. In all the distraction around Heimdall no one it seems had been watching the third man.  
“A fine ship you have here,” Thor says in a light, conversational tone. “How many guns? Eight? Ten?”  
“Enough,” Steve says absently. There he is, on the far side of the mainmast, half-hidden by the ropes. In his distraction the words come tripping off his tongue. “How do you hunt without guns?”  
“We do well enough.” Thor gives him a reproachful look. “Perhaps we are just too fearsome, our prey hands over the booty at the mere sight of us.”  
Steve gives him an incredulous look. “Really?”  
Thor laughs, a deep boom that outmatches the sound of the waves. Of course not, we have those.”  
He turns and points to his ship, and it takes Steve a moment to translate the crisscross of wooden poles and tarred ropes into a functional weapon.  
“A trebuchet?” Nat sounds impressed and a little envious, and Steve can see several impassioned arguments for one of her very own in his near future.  
“Two,” Thor says proudly. “Load them up with a few old barrels, add a little fire and-” He makes a little _thwip_ sound, miming the arc of a flaming barrel through the air. “Lot’s of wailing and screaming and ‘please stop, kind sirs’.” He claps his hands together. “Very effective.”  
Steve can’t help but smile. “It sounds impressive.”  
Thor beams at him, his already radiant smile growing somehow brighter, at least until Drax opens his mouth.

“I _said_,” Drax growls, drawing his fine, curved blade. “Walk away.”  
Loki, who had been skulking around the ship while everyone listened to Thor, freezes, one hand grasping the ragged edge of sailcloth covering the longboat with every intention of lifting it and taking a peek. Drax, who had followed him, raises the knife in warning.  
“Well now,” Loki says after a moment’s pause. “What have you got in here?”  
Drax takes a step towards him, arm raised to strike, stopping only because the pointed tip of a staff presses against his throat, wielded by a silent Heimdall who had not been standing idly by.  
Steve doesn’t take a second to think his actions through, pulling out his pistol and aiming it at Loki’s head even as Nat reaches out to him to stop.  
“He said walk away,” Steve snarls.  
Thor draws his axe in answer, hefting the blade up, and Steve can only brace himself as everything spirals out of control. His people will win, of course they will. He has more men and more guns and a half dozen cannons that will soon see the strange ship sunk. But he takes no pleasure in the thought of conquest, not against these people.  
“Wait!” Heimdall shouts, lowering his staff. Drax rubs at his throat, wiping away the pinprick of blood there with a glare as Heimdall turns to the longboat, his eyes fixed on an unknowable shore. Loki moves back to the longboat, too curious for his own good, and Steve draws back the hammer on his pistol, his aim unwavering. “I said stop.”  
The world tilts, and it could be the rolling of the waves or Thor’s hand on his arm. The thrum against Steve’s ears might be the roar of the sea or Thor yelling in Steve’s ear, pleas to end whatever madness this is, shouting to his brother to back away. The words echo strangely, as if heard from far away.  
“Havmann,” Heimdall murmurs, and tears off the sailcloth.  
Thor pulls down on Steve’s arm, and the shot splinters the deck at Heimdall’s feet. His eyes are sightless and golden, he smiles as if meeting a friend.  
“Hei and well met,” he says in a hushed voice, inclining his head towards James.  
James, blinking in the sudden sunlight, shields his eyes with his hand and smiles back. “Hello.”

*

Thor is quick to call for a barrel of ale to be rolled across the gangplank, and Steve is deeply grateful when a battered cup is pressed into his hands. A cup is a far better thing to hold than a pistol, even when filled with a strange, sour brew that makes his mouth prickle. Mead, Thor calls it, and beneath the mask of vinegar Steve can taste honey.  
In the days of yore, Steve once read, when men gave fealty it was over bread and salt. Taste them under another man’s roof and you need never fear harm from him. Well, their roof is the firmament, and there is salt enough surrounding them to make a man sick of the taste, so bread and ale seems a fair substitute. Steve calls the rest of the crew up to meet their new allies, and sends word down to Luis to see what can be rustle up. The Ship’s Cook does not disappoint, and round after round of flat, unleavened bread, spiked with chilli, are carried up to the deck. Eventually, his shirtsleeves rolled up and flour clinging to his damp hair, Luis himself comes up as well, and gets a hero’s welcome from Thor’s crew, who have subsisted on little more than dried fish and dense rye bread for months on end.  
While the two crews share bread and sour ale under the watchful eyes of their respective Captains, Heimdall remains with James. The two converse, after a fashion, though little of it seems to be in spoken word. James fingers the beads woven into Heimdall’s hair, while the blind man dips careful hands into the water to brush against James’ tail. Even Ava, who vies with Steve for most protective of their charge, seems willing enough to leave them in peace. Steve, however, feels a sharp little pain in his gut, a nasty little twist that catches his breath and tenses his jaw, and he forces himself to relax. It is a good thing, a fine thing, for James to have made a friend. But there is something at the core of Steve, some magpie instinct to hoard, like a man who has found treasure and chooses to bury it rather than redistribute the wealth.   
If he could he would take that urge and crush it between his hands, never to bother him again. He cannot, so he turns a blind eye instead, holding out his cup at Thor’s offer of more mead.

The story of James’ founding is soon passed back and forth, each version wilder than the last until the crew swear blind that Steve himself battled a giant whale and pried the Merman from its jaws.  
“Fear not,” Thor says softly, and Steve silently curses his wandering gaze for returning to the Merman. “Heimdall is a good man, I would trust him with my life.” Thor chuckles, amused by some memory or other. “Have done, more than once.”  
Steve nods, not really paying attention, and Thor launches into a tale of an enemy ship and a lucky escape.  
“How did he know?” Steve asks suddenly, and Thor pauses in his depiction of battling a giant squid, arms mid-flail.  
“Hmn?” Thor wiggles his arms a little more, as his story has gained quite an audience. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”  
The suggestion is made with the wide, innocent grin that Steve is starting to recognise as anything but. He would be churlish to refuse the excuse he so obviously needs to check on the Merman, and Thor does delight in being meddlesome. Steve would resent being played immensely if he wasn’t so grateful.

Heimdall looks up from where he sits beside the longboat as Steve approaches, no doubt alerted by the sound of his boots on the deck and nothing more sinister. James raises himself up a little, reaching out a hand for Steve to clasp.  
“The good Captain,” Heimdall remarks. “James has told me about you.”  
“Nothing bad, I hope.” James’ hand in his is cool and familiar, squeezing once before letting go. Steve hooks their fingers together, delaying the departure a moment, before letting James slip away. He pulls up his usual crate and sits down.   
“Far from it.” Heimdall smiles, warm and easy, a smile it is hard not to trust. “James speaks very highly of you.” James makes a clipped little sound, indignant and scolding, and Heimdall laughs. “My apologies. I mean to say you are a terrible Captain, and no one likes you.”  
Steve snorts, taking the ribbing with good grace. “A really bad egg,” he agrees, before making a clumsy attempt at directing the conversation elsewhere. “You called him something before? A halfman?”  
“Havmann.” Heimdall shifts to a more comfortable sitting position, folding his hands over his bent knee.   
“You have encountered his like before.”  
“Once,” Heimdall’s expression softens. “I saw a Havmann in my youth, a long time ago.”  
“You saw?” Perhaps it is just a slip of the tongue.   
Heimdall grins. “I was not always as you see me now. But yes, I saw a Havmann. We were journeying south from Tønsberg, bound for Hirtshals when we saw him in the water.”  
There is more to Heimdall’s story, but he does not share it, and Steve does not do the discourtesy of asking. Besides, his thoughts are elsewhere.  
“So there are others,” he asks instead. “Others like James?”

For all the time they have spent together, for all the stories he has read aloud while James feigned sleep or listened intently, Steve knows nothing of Mermen.   
He knows that James can breathe underwater, that his skin is cool and almost slippery to the touch, like oiled silk. Steve knows that James bleeds red, that the scar tissue on his hip feels taut and irregular, that he favours raw fish over salt pork. But he does not know if James has a mother and father, or how to utter a single word in his language of strange clicks and stutters. James can be well understood these days, a far cry from those first desperate hours spent on deck, but Steve…  
Steve never asked.  
A question asked is soon a question answered, and what would he do with such knowledge? If James had told him Mermen lived in shoals, like wish or whales, migrating along the coastline in search of food or warmer waters, then he would be duty bound to search, would he not? To set a course for the chain of islands where they had found him and return him to his people.  
Would they be thankful, to have their lost son returned to them, or would they turn him away? Would the spiderweb of scars on his skin mark him as weak, a burden?   
As a child, Steve’s mother had always told him not to handle fledgling birds that fell from their nests, that their mothers would smell the human on them and reject them. Is it the same for Merfolk? Would so much time among humans leave a patina on his soul, mark him as no longer one of them?  
And all of these fears are a mask, a justification for the truth that squats in the dark corners of his heart.

“If I told you,” Heimdall speaks slowly, and though his golden eyes cannot see they are fixed on Steve’s profile. “That there was a place, an island in the middle of the ocean as far from America as it is from Portugal. That it was the last safe haven of his people. What would you do?”  
Steve does not hesitate. “I would ask you to show me the way.”  
“Why?”  
“What kind of stupid question is that?” Steve snaps. “So he can go home, of course.”  
“Calm yourself.” Heimdall reaches out and pats the flat of his hand against Steve’s shoulder, his aim unwavering. “There is no such island.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “Or there was, before the Portuguese settled there. Now there are houses and churches and…” He waves his hand in a little circle, to encompass the ceaseless sprawl of humanity. “There were many islands, unknown by man, and home to all manner of life. But now we rule over the seas in our tall ships, and every year the empty blue places in those maps of yours are filled in as more of those little islands are found. And if it is marked on a map then someone must own it, yes? So men travel to these islands and they build their houses and plant their flags.” Heimdall sighs. “Where is left for his kind to go?”  
Steve reaches for James’ hand again, linking their fingers together. _Here_, he wants to say. _You can stay here_. He swallows down the ache in his throat. “We will find a place for him.”  
“I have no doubt.” Heimdall’s expression turns grave. “But their time is coming to an end. They will pass into legend, and soon after, so shall we.”  
“What do you mean by that?” Steve frowns, and James flicks water at him to make him stop.  
“The sea is getting crowded, haven’t you noticed?” Heimdall glances back at Thor, who has snagged Loki and has him tucked under one arm, no doubt telling some joke at his expense. “The British and the Dutch will not tolerate our presence for much longer. Someone will bring down a Spanish treasure galleon, or take over a port with some strategic value, and they will answer with guns and ships.” Across the deck Loki gives his brother a tight little smile. “We will be hunted down, and our bodies will be strung along harbours as warnings to others, gone from the maps like the Havmann and all manner of creatures that came before us. We will pass into legend, remembered only as stories.”  
“But we will not be forgotten,” Steve says softly, watching the way James traces the scars on his fingers.   
“No,” Hemdall agrees. “We will not be forgotten.”

“Heimdall!” Thor bellows as he strides over to join them, Loki still tucked under his arm. “What are you two fishwives gossiping about?”  
“Nothing of consequence,” Heimdall answers, rising to his feet.  
“Mneh,” Thor scoffs, not believing him for a second. “I found this one poking about and made him empty his pockets. Is this yours?” Thor holds out Steve’s copy of Pilgrim's Progress.  
“He is welcome to it,” Steve says, casting a glance James’ way. “I have other books.”  
“I wish I could say the same.” Loki snatches the book out of Thor’s hand, quickly secreting it away in a hidden pocket.  
“My brother does love his books,” Thor says proudly.  
“Your brother can speak for himself,” Loki snaps before turning to Heimdall. “If it’s alright with you I would like to reach the Inaguas before I die of old age.”  
Steve knows that name. “You’re searching for Spanish treasure?”   
“We are!” Thor beams at him. “We heard word of a sunken ship off the coast of St George’s island.”  
“Oh, tell him everything, why don’t you?” Loki hisses.  
“Why not?” Thor points to James. “He has been honest with us.”  
Steve already liked Thor. In that moment he found himself liking him a great deal more. “Be careful, the coral reefs there are deadly.”  
Thor points a thumb at his ship. His slow moving, shallow-hulled ship, and Steve coughs out a laugh.  
“I’m sure we will manage,” Thor beams.

As Thor and his crew make ready to depart, James grasps the edge of Heimdall’s sleeve and tugs.  
“What is it, my friend?” Heimdall asks, turning to him.  
Steve opens his mouth to tell him it is how James shows you he wants something, but stops himself, because James is drawing his hand down his hip, frowning as if searching for something. His fingers twist, and he lets out a sharp little sound of discomfort, before holding up a single, emerald scale. It is no bigger than a thumbnail and iridescent like a beetle shell, reflecting hues of pink and copper in the light.  
James places the scale in the palm of Heimdall’s hand, firmly closing his fingers around it.  
Heimdall murmurs something in a tongue Steve cannot speak, breathless and hitching, and pulls a silver bead from his hair, slipping it into the Merman’s hand.

*

By seven bells the Asgard has long departed, leaving the crew enough mead for the evening, as well as a barrel of salted fish. Luis, of course, is delighted by the addition to the food supplies, similar enough to the saltfish they come by in the Jamaicas. Given enough time, he might one day forgive Steve for ordering him against using it, adding it to the hold with the other supplies. There is no shortage of fish or salt at sea, and he cannot spare the quantities of fresh water it would take to process.  
The Asgard departed with rum and salt pork, along with a few goods traded from one crewman to another. Drax managed to barter for an axe, well-balanced and beautifully made, which he swings around proudly, and with any luck he won’t have put a hole in the deck by morning.  
It is not the same as hunting, but the encounter and subsequent trade goes some way to scratch the itch under their skin, and as the sun sinks past the horizon the crew gather on the deck to play music and sing songs.  
Steve takes a cup of mead to James, a new book tucked under his arm, and finds Ava sat with him, watching as Pietro tries to convince Nat to dance with him while someone plays a fiddle.  
“Ava?” Steve says softly, almost unwilling to intrude on their privacy. Almost.  
She is sat on Steve’s crate, a strand pulled from one of the old ropes between her teeth, and James’ hair in her hands. As Steve watches she separates the length of hair into three, and with quick fingers twists it into a plait. The silver bead that Steve had seen Heimdall hand over is slipped onto the end, she pulls the strand from her mouth and fastens the end neatly.  
“Captain?” she says in return, having made Steve wait.  
The plait sits neatly behind James’ ear, the silver bead resting against his collarbone. It catches the lantern light, shining brightly for a moment before James turn his way and smiles.  
“How does it sit?” Ava asks him, and James fingers the bead, looking to Steve for approval.  
“Very well,” Steve says. “It suits you well, Jamy.”

If Ava had been waiting for something, some assurance or confirmation, that seems to be it. She gives the bead a last tug, making sure it is secure, then leans forwards to press her forehead to James’.   
“Goodnight,” James utters, voice low and rasping. He reaches out to cup the nape of her neck briefly, leaving droplets of water in her hair. She smiles, something Steve has never seen before, despite her years as one of his crew. With one last tug of the plait Ava gives Steve a nod, before moving into the shadows.   
Steve watches her leave, and odd sensation, discomfort, gnawing at him.   
“Here,” he says, pushing the cup of mead into James’ hand, and quickly follows the ghost into the shadows.  
“Ava?” he says, voice catching but it is heard, and he sees her beneath the mainmast.  
She had smiled, and Steve has found himself smiling more now with James aboard than he ever did in the years before his coming, and he knows in his heart why.  
“James,” Steve says, and then says nothing more. What is he trying to do? Give his blessings to whatever lies between them, or telling her to stop? Steve’s heart, lodged in his throat, leaves no room for words.  
“Captain?” Ava approaches slowly, gaze flicking over him, as if searching for something.  
“You care. For him.” Steve says, each word dragged from his lungs like the weighing of an anchor bedded in clay. “Don’t you?”  
She narrows her eyes, head tilting to one side, and stares at him. Steve opens his mouth, to clarify or throw up, he’s not entirely sure, and Ava lets out a sudden burst of laughter. She quickly touches her fingers to her lips, silencing herself, and takes a moment to pull herself together.  
“Goodnight, Captain,” she says firmly, walking away in search of mead, or sleep, or to do whatever it is ghosts do.

Steve walks back to the longboat, feeling decidedly off-kilter for a man who lives at sea, to find James has drunk the cup of mead already. His eyes are bright, his tail flicking along to the sound of voices raised in song.   
But there is rum to be had, a bottle he stashed behind his crate, and Steve fills the cup before taking his customary seat. He clears his throat, and when that doesn’t help he takes a sip of rum before offering the cup over to James, and tries to put his thoughts in order.   
Someone is singing about a great sea serpent, which means the mead is all but gone and they are making progress through the reserves of brandy.  
“I brought a new book.” Steve holds up a slim volume. “Since Loki took my copy of Pilgrim’s Progress-”  
“Good!” James snorts, and Steve on impulse flicks a little water at him. It catches him on the nose, making him laugh.  
“Since Loki took my copy of Pilgrim’s Progress,” Steve repeats firmly, and to no end as James keeps laughing. “Go on, then,” Steve sighs. “Since everyone else is laughing at me tonight.”  
James takes a sip of rum, grimacing at the taste before swallowing down another mouthful, and looks to Steve expectantly.   
“I thought you might like something different,” Steve says, holding up the book again. A mere pamphlet exchanged for a whole book would seem unfair, but Loki had taken being shot at surprisingly well. It must happen to him a lot. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”  
Steve opens to the first page, where there is an illustration of a knight in armour. “Not a night as in night time, but as in a… a soldier of sorts.” Steve holds up the page. “See? A knight in shining armour.”

James rests his chin on the edge of the boat, eyes half-lidded and head cocked as the crew begin another song, and this time it is Drax’s voice that carries over to them.  
There are many songs that the crew delight in that are not fit for polite society, and a fair few that make Steve’s cheeks burn to hear them.   
James frowns, trying to understand the story being told in song. “What is wh-”  
“-Baltimore,” Steve says loudly. “A port town to the north. Very far away.”  
James listens to another verse, and Steve braces himself. If he doesn’t answer them Luis will, and he’ll be less subtle about it. James must see the tension in him, and asks no more questions, no doubt saving them for someone more willing to answer.  
The song ends, and another voice rises up singing of home. James closes his eyes, the silver bead in his hair catching the lantern light. Steve does not think about what it would be like to push his fingers into that mass of dark hair, to gather it up in handfuls and breathe in the saltwater scent of it.   
Steve refills the cup once more, and they pass it back and forth as the sun sets, the book left for another day. Across the deck the crew dance and sing as the stars glitter and turn overhead, the clatter and stamp of boots as they dance is enough to wake the devil, and the singing enough to scare him away again.

_Swab your decks, me hearties_   
_Slice them up with pride_   
_Light your oars, you sons of whores_   
_Yours is smaller than mine_

_\- Four Whores of Baltimore)_


	6. Isla Mujeres

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Here_ is the shape of a scale under his finger. _There_ a jagged tooth that could slice through his tongue, and he would welcome it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Folks, nothing could have prepared me for how gorgeous the art of Steve carrying Bucky is. Go yell at Nabu and tell them they’re AMAZING! [Tumblr](https://fadefilter.tumblr.com) and  
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/fadefilter)  
There is not one but TWO beautiful artworks in this chapter! Heidi has blessed us with Steve and Bucky in a longboat! [Twitter](https://twitter.com/winter_sergeant) their Steve/Bucky art [Tumblr](https://winter-sergeant.tumblr.com) and all their art  
[Tumblr](https://heidimakesart.tumblr.com/)  
Go send love their way!

It would be a lie to say that Steve remains untroubled when at last he sights the coast of Mexico through Nat’s spyglass. Punta Nizuc lies to the west, the azure waters hiding coral reefs and rocks that would tear the ship’s hull out from beneath them. Beyond that is the false shoreline of El Rey and the ruined temples of Luis’ old gods. If one were to climb the steep slope and walk past the ruins, past the crumbling steps and the weathered carvings and the lush vegetation, they would reach the Nichupte lagoon. With a rowboat and a second pair of hands you could cross the lagoon in four or five hours and reach Mexico. If the crocodiles didn’t eat you.  
Steve turns his attention north to Isla Mujeres. The morning had been spent hunched over the map, Scott and Clint shouldering each other out of the way as Luis had picked out a course through the rocks to a natural slipway on the north coast, a clear path to a sandy beach where they can haul the ship ashore. The rocks will not hide them from the view of any passing ships, but with luck they will pass for a wreck, and only a fool would follow them.  
It is a good place to rest and make repairs, but Steve’s heart is uneasy.  
Nat, standing at his side, her mouth twisted in a grimace, gestures for her spyglass and Steve hands it over. She scowls at the island in the distance, and the sky, and the world in general. “You trust him?”  
“Luis?” Steve waits for her nod. “Of course. With my life.”  
“What about my life?” Nat lowers the spyglass enough to look at him.  
“Even that,” Steve says, suppressing a smile.  
She looks unconvinced, and goes back to glaring at the sea.

The day is clear and the winds are steady, so it does not take long to reach the island, following the tapering shore to the northernmost end, where the coastline squares off like the trimmed feathers of an arrow fletch.  
Steve calls for all but the topgallant sails to be clewed, favouring the ability to steer over speed. He keeps a firm hand on the wheel, trusting the crew to do their duty, and listens out for shouts from Barton up in the shrouds for changes in their course.  
Little by little they inch their way inland, between the outcrops of rocks jutting out of the clear waters, white waves foaming around them. The crewmen with the sharpest eyes hang over the rails, searching the way ahead for reefs and rocks.  
In his longboat James watches with clear frustration, unable to offer help. Steve glances his way, taking in the way he grips the rail of his boat, lifting his upper body out of the water as he tries to see more clearly. He is getting stronger by the day, and though he does not say as much, he is restless in the confines of his boat. Despite the sleepless hours Steve has wasted trying to come up with an alternative, so far he has nothing better in mind.  
It is hard not to imagine, in times like this, guiding the ship through dangerous waters with the aid of a Merman. James could swim ahead, dive deep into murky waters and warn them of hidden rocks. The reefs and atolls of the Bahamas would be no threat to him. Why take a ship into those treacherous waters in search of sunken treasure when you had a rowboat and a Merman who could breathe underwater? They wouldn’t even need to hunt for ships when he could gather armfulls of gold from the seafloor.  
Steve’s wandering thoughts are cut off by Barton’s shout, and he scolds himself for becoming distracted. It is a ridiculous notion, frivolous and naive. The crew would become bored without a good hunt now and then, and James is his own person, not a gundog to be sent after spoils by a lazy captain unable to dive for it himself.  
He turns his attention to the task at hand, but the afterimage remains behind his eyes, of leaning over the gunwale to watch the sinuous curve of James’ tail slicing through blue water, leading the ship to safe harbour.

By skill or fortune they make it past the rocks, and the ship’s hull crests the golden sand. At Nat’s order the crew scramble into action, the strong swimmers among them climbing over the side and diving into the water. The rest of the crew cast thick ropes down after them, tied to masts and rails and anything that will bear the force, before tumbling into the water and being hauled into the shallows by their crewmates.  
The longboat, weighed down by seawater, takes three of them to winch over the side, James clinging to the prow as he is thrown about. The boat bumps against the hull on the way down, until half the water has spilled out, nearly taking the Merman with it. It hits the waves with a splash, the ropes dropping after it, and James is quick to gather them up and wrap them around his forearm in coils like he has seen the crewmen do.  
Steve climbs down the hull after him, and carefully steps into the boat. It is already sitting low in the water without the addition of his weight, and with it begins rocking dangerously as he sloshes about, keeping clear of James’ tail. A pair of oars are thrown down after him, and he retrieves them from the water before they float away.  
With no bench to sit on Steve has to kneel, fitting the oars into the nearest set of rowing pins. James curls around him, trying to give him room, but there is little space for Steve and his tail. It bumps against him again, and Steve reaches out to steady it, scales smooth and bright under his fingers.  
“Stop squirming, Jamy,” Steve chides. “You’ll tip us over.”  
James falls still for a moment, then moves again, scales sliding against the palm of Steve’s hand as he settles against him. Steve grasps the oars and shifts his weight, James’ tail a firm pressure against his hip, and begins to row the boat out of the path of the ship. 

The Nomad moves slowly towards the shore at first, all hands on the ropes but feet struggling to find purchase in the shifting sands underfoot. One or two men lose their grip and tumble into the waves with a splash and flail of limbs, only to be collared and hauled upright by the nearest crewman.  
Drax, taking the lead with the longest rope at the head, roars the first line of a call-and-return song, and moving as one, the crew take up the slack, shouting out the answering verses as the ship inches forward.  
Steve steers the boat around when they are at a safe distance, pulling in the oars and watching as the ship is hauled onto the sand.  
Though it may seem otherwise, the least dangerous part of careening a ship is bringing it onto land. It is hardly safe, no part of their profession is safe, but the ropes are well-spaced apart and the crew know what needs to be done. If the ship should slip to one side or the other they will right it and bring it to land safely, he can trust them on that.  
The danger is in the careening itself. The ship will need to be brought far out of the reach of the tide and tilted over, exposing one side of the hull. The vast bulk of it will be secured to the mainland by ropes, the weight distributed so the mainmast does not crack under the strain, or whatever it is tied to give way and cause the ship to roll. They will wedge support struts under the hull, keeping it as secure as they can, but it is a dangerous task, scraping the hull clean, and the ship is large and heavy. If a rope snaps the whole thing could roll, crushing any poor soul who does not scramble out of the way in time.

James twists around, sending the boat rocking, and dips a hand into the water, fingers spreading out under the surface. He sighs, sinking his arm into the water to the elbow, and for a heart-stopping moment Steve thinks he will dive right in, disappear in a flash of green and never rise to the surface again. Some hint of his concern must lie on Steve’s features, because James flicks water at him, making him start and wipe it away.  
“Alright,” Steve mutters. “You made your point.”  
He takes up the oars and rows towards the shore, and James lets his long tail drape over the side of the boat, the fin fanning out in the water. It shines, sleek and bright, buffeted by the tide.  
Steve climbs out of the boat when the bottom touches sand, boots sinking into the sand as he wades to shore. He hauls the boat after him by a rope affixed to the prow, and James watches the same action writ large further down the beach as Drax leads the crew in dragging the ship up the beachhead.  
They are quick to secure the ship in place once grounded, with Nat and Scott scouting out good places to tie the ropes and keep the ship at an oblique angle. The handful of crew that remained on the ship throw down their supplies of good timber, sturdy lengths of hardwood cut for purpose.

There is still much to be done, and Steve taps his knuckles to the warped wooden hull of the longboat to get James’ attention. “I have things to see to, Jamy,” he says when the Merman looks his way. “Will you be alright without me for a while?”  
“Yes,” James answers quickly, tilting his head curiously as another beam is wedged against the prow. “Stay here?”  
“For now.” Steve gnaws on the inside of his cheek, his shoulders aching from the rowing but he is too keyed up to feel tired. “We will find you a place soon, I promise.”  
James folds his arms and leans them against the rail, resting his chin on the back of his hand, and it’s a clear enough dismissal. Steve gives the hull a last tap before striking out across the sand, Nat clearly visible from a distance by her red coat. Ava stands beside her, relaying news of one kind or another.  
“Ava,” Steve calls as he approaches. “See that James has fresh water.” There is still a chance that Luis’ people will not react well to a Merman, and there is no one he would trust more with James’ safety. “Eyes open and sword drawn, understood?”  
“Aye, Captain,” she murmurs, slipping away.  
“How fares the day, Nat?” Steve asks, keeping his voice light.  
“No one has died,” Nat frowns at Kurt, his boot buried in the wet sand, his wig askew, and David trying to free him. “Yet.”  
“I had every faith,” Steve assures her, as David loses his grip on Kurt’s sleeve and smacks face first into the wet sand. “Give them an hour’s rest before they set to work. Tell them if they don’t grumble they’ll get double rations of rum.”  
“There’s not enough rum on earth to keep this lot from grumbling,” Nat mutters. “A pig. Promise them a pig and let Barton cook it, none of that nonsense from Luis where it gets buried overnight and comes out black.”  
Steve can see Luis making his way towards them, and hopes to any god that is listening that he didn’t overhear. “Whatever your pleasure,” he concedes. “But not a word to the Cook on the matter, understood?”  
“Aye.”

Steve has no idea if the village has a name, but he knows the way there, walking up the sand to the dense thicket of vegetation that draws a shaky line between the beach and inland. Luis and Scott accompany him, Luis leading the way, quickly finding the path through the jungle to the settlement beyond, hidden from passing ships.  
As far as the world is concerned, Isla Mujeres is deserted, and Steve intends to keep it that way. Beyond the trees stands a cluster of small buildings, blocky little huts made of adobe and stone. Luis lets out a shout, running ahead to greet the handful of people that have come out to meet them. They are led by the old matriarch of the island, a tiny grey-haired woman that everyone refers to as Abuela, whether related to her or not. Abuela grabs Luis, manhandling him and scolding him loudly in a tongue that bears no resemblance to Spanish. Luis grins throughout the onslaught, chattering non-stop as she tugs at his hair and slaps his stomach, before turning her attention to Scott. He gets treated far more gently, his chin held firmly while she kisses his cheeks and, from Luis’ translation, laments his lack of a wife and her lack of grandchildren to dote upon. When Scott is finally released from her affections she turns on Steve, and he braces himself for the attack. Her hands, worn by years of hard labour and sea air, land hard, bone barely covered by skin digging into his cheeks.  
“We’ll take a pig, and pay in gold,” Steve says, nodding to Luis to translate.  
“Yes!” Luis beams, clapping his hands together. “I’ll start digging the pit.”  
Steve grimaces as his beard is examined with a critical eye, Nat’s words still fresh in his memory. “Barton can take care of the pig. You said you’d do that thing with the fish.” A strand of grey hair is plucked mercilessly from the thicket and Steve winces. “I’m sure James would like to try it,” he manages to add before another coarse grey hair is pulled.  
Luis relinquishes pork cooking duty with good grace, while Abuela cossets and scolds Steve in equal measure. Though he doesn’t understand her words he knows the shape of a mother’s hands, and the kindness hidden under stern words.  
“Luis,” Steve murmurs as she pokes his stomach and laments that he is too thin. “Tell her there’s someone I want her to meet.”

Despite her age Abuela is still sure footed and steady, bustling through the jungle path to the beach, walking stick in hand. She stops at the sight of the ship on its side, and Luis is quick to reassure her that it is only for repairs, and no one is hurt. Abuela purses her lips and taps her walking stick on the sand, and Steve leads her down the beach, away from the ship to where Ava stands by a warped and weathered longboat.  
As they approach James sits up, water sluicing down from his shoulders, and turns to look at Steve over his shoulder. He catches sight of the old woman, glance flicking to Steve for reassurance, and slowly raises his hand in greeting.  
“Abuela,” Steve holds out his hand, and James reaches out for it, clasping tightly in greeting. “This is Jamy.”  
For a second, maybe less, Abuela only stares at the light reflecting on the shining scales of his tail, and Ava closes her fist around the hilt of her dagger. James holds out his other hand, stretching his arm over the edge of the boat as far as he can reach.  
Abuela stumbles, Luis reaching for her, holding her steady as she comes towards him, hand outstretched, and James curls his fingers around her wrist. His touch is delicate, his fingertips mapping the creased parchment of her skin, tracing the deep blue veins visible beneath.  
“Hello,” James says, voice rasping and low.  
Abuela blinks rapidly, hand shaking, and Luis murmurs to her gently. James wraps both hands around hers, smiling as wide as he can while still keeping his mouth closed, his sharp teeth hidden.  
“Kíimak 'oolal,” Abuela says at last, lifting their joined hands so she can kiss his knuckles. Welcome.

There is a tide pool on the northernmost edge of the island, known by the locals as the King’s pool. There are tide pools across the island, some long and narrow and others deep and fractious, but Abuela insists that the King’s pool is where James should stay. Luis takes Steve over to scope it out while Abuela remains with James, their hands clasped as if nothing on earth could separate them.  
It is less than ten minutes walk from the village, private without being isolated, and sheltered from the worst of the sea. There is also, Luis points out with much working of his eyebrows, and old building, conveniently unoccupied, if Steve wanted to stay closer to James while he convalesces.  
Luis takes great pride in using the word _convalesce_, as though James was one of those highly strung girls in their too-tight corsets from Steve’s books. Steve isn’t entirely sure what to make of Luis at the best of times, least of all when he is being especially verbose, and can only purse his lips make noncommittal little sounds until there is another sharp turn in the thread of conversation.  
The pool is better than anything Steve could hope for, a deep oval basin maybe twenty meters across and half as deep in places. It lies far along the rocky shore, fed by the incoming tide. Seaweed and mussels line its edges, and a few bright fish, brought in by the tide, swim in lazy circles. There is even a flat-topped rock standing proud of the water, where James could bask in the sun.  
“What do you think, Cap?” Luis asks, hardly able to contain himself. “You think it’ll do?”  
“Yes,” and why does his stomach clench? “Yes, it will.”

By the time they return to the beach the ship is secured, a complex system of ropes and pulleys spiderwebbed along the sand and rocks. Steve walks a full circuit around the ship with Nat, checking the tension of the ropes, and the block and tackles securing them to the rocks and trees. The trees Steve regards with a wary eye, kicking at the roots twisting into the sand.  
“Will they hold?” he asks Nat, and it’s not that he doubts her, it’s just his own luck he doesn’t trust.  
“They’ll hold,” Nat says firmly, as if they wouldn’t dare break.  
He takes her word as law, and walks down to the beach. The rest of the crew are milling around a crackling fire, waiting impatiently for Barton to get on with cooking some pork. A handful are making themselves useful, building a spit for the pig to be roasted on, but mostly they grumble and get underfoot. There is no sign of Luis on the beach, or Scott, which means they must have taken their fishing poles and gone off somewhere to catch dinner. Steve could go looking for him, but he knows that he’s delaying for no reason. He sucks in a short, scolding breath, and goes down to the longboat to see James.

Abuela has returned to the village, her footprints tracking across the sand, but Ava is still sat on the beach by James’ side. Steve catches the two of them talking softly, James’ voice low and halting as he stumbles over the more challenging words. His sharp teeth make anything longer than a syllable difficult to say, and he has bitten his tongue often enough trying to say Banner that the Carpenter insisted on being called Bruce instead. But he tries, and he can greet every member of the crew by name, though Drax always ends in a glottal ck and not the softer ks. Drax seems to prefer it that way, and has taken to using it himself.  
“Captain?” Ava says, rising to her feet.  
“As you were, Ava.” Steve reaches for James’ outstretched hand. Their fingers link briefly. Squeezing in an unspoken greeting before parting again. “James, how would you like a change of scenery?”

The walk across the rocks is slower than Steve would like, James in his arms pulling him off-kilter every time he turns around to look at something else. Each time James moves his tail twists in counterbalance, the great sail of it spinning through the air and threatening to knock them both onto the slippery rocks.  
“I will throw you over my shoulder,” Steve warns, not entirely joking, as James turns to follow the flight of a sea bird overhead, one arm thrown over Steve’s shoulder, their chests pressed together. “Good lord but you’re slippery enough at is it.”  
James laughs, a dull boom of sound that clatters up his throat like waves pounding on the shore, and wraps both arms around Steve’s shoulders, bringing them face to face. James’ breath is warm and saline against his cheek, and Steve’s breath catches the same moment his foot slips. He curses lously, righting himself, and James lets out a sharp little gasp as he moves a little too suddenly, pressing his hand to the scars on his side.  
The skin has knitted together well enough, leaving a web of scar tissue that leads from his hip to his lowest rib, but the muscles underneath are still damaged, and being confined to a longboat full of seawater that can barely contain his tail has not helped matters. Banner is certain that in a pool, with room to swim and fresh water, James will regain his strength. That is if they don’t bash their skulls in crossing the rocks to get there.  
“When you are healed I will build you a damn wheelbarrow and cart you around the whole island,” Steve says through gritted teeth. “Just hold still, would you?”  
James lets out a soft series of clicks, the tone chiding, but settles against Steve, one hand cupping the nape of Steve’s neck. He murmurs something against Steve’s ear, a click and whistle between his sharp teeth that he can only interpret as humouring assent.

There are steps carved in the rock leading into the pool, ancient and weathered. Steve’s leather boots barely touch the water before James twists out of his grip, his tail lashing out as he dives into the water.  
For an instant Steve sees James, not just the parts that he is comprised of - the loose curls of his hair and the shimmer of his scales and the shape of his arms - but the entirety of him. The way his spine undulates, a ripple that begins at the base of his skull and ends at the flick of his tailfin. The shine of his body from the wet river stone of his shoulders to the crushed glass of his tail.  
They have spent so long with the Merman confined to a small boat, it is as if they all forgot what he truly was - creature so far from human it seems laughable that Steve spent so long teaching him the shape of his name. He might as well recite Chaucer to seabirds or Blake to a thunderstorm.  
James dives down deep, and the water is clear enough for Steve to track his movements, the way his tail stretches and ripples. He touches a palm to the rocks at the bottom, using his own momentum to push himself upwards, and breaks the surface with a shout of laughter, curling in on himself to dive down again, wound in his side momentarily forgotten.  
His joy is beautiful to behold, something rare that Steve should be honoured to bear witness to. Instead it is shame that claws at his lungs, strangling him. All this time he has kept James caged, telling himself that it was for his own safety. Taught him human speech and fed him human food and pretended that he was a man, and why? To spare his own sour heart?

Steve pulls off his boots and sits on a flat rock by the water’s edge. He lets his bare feet slip into the water, shockingly cold, and wriggles his toes. James swims past, catching hold of a big toe and tugging it, and Steve’s arms pinwheel for a moment, grasping for purchase to keep from being pulled under.  
“Hey!” he shouts after James, who swims away, mouth stretched wide in a playful grin, teeth bright as needles.  
He surfaces again, shaking his hair out of his eyes, and looks out to sea before turning back to Steve. He swims the length of the pool to join him, hauling his upper body out of the water and resting his elbows on the rock where Steve sits. His chest rises and falls, his breath coming in rapid little gasps. Worn out already, after a few minutes at play, Steve thinks. How weak he must feel.  
When he has caught his breath James hauls himself onto the rock beside Steve, letting his tail drag in the water sparkling and wet, and leans back on his hands.  
“You like it?” Steve asks, almost hesitant. _Tell me you hate it. Tell me you miss your little boat_.  
“Yes!” James grins, displaying jagged rows of teeth before his smile softens, moving away from his mouth and rounding his cheeks, making his eyes shine. “Thank you.”  
“You’re welcome,” Steve tells him, and it is true. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for the creature beside him, breath heaving as he watches the tide.  
There is nothing Steve wouldn’t do for him, even if it means taking up a hammer and shattering his own heart.

***

In his youth, Steve had harboured dreams of running off to somewhere like Paris or Italy and becoming a great artist. Good paper was expensive and hard to come by, and he hoarded what scraps he could to draw on, going so far as to peel off advertisements and wreck sale signs pasted to walls. They never came off clean, the corners tearing where the signposter had been too generous with his paste, fragments of plaster and woodchip clinging to the paper. But Steve persevered, hoarding the scraps and fragments, even when his pencil failed to make a mark on the sheen of dried glue.  
What would the boy he once was say to the man he is now, to see him sitting by a campfire with a notebook in his hand? Page after page of clean white sheets, and a wooden pencil to write with. No more stubs of graphite bound with clay, staining his fingers grey when he so much as touched them, his drawings smudged beyond recognition. He no longer draws with thick, clumsy strokes either, his pencil sharpened to a point with a few scrapes of his pocket knife.  
Steve looks down at the page he has been fussing over, at the sketched wooden boards forming a raised edge along a quarterdeck. The scribbled notes around the page offer few clues as to the designs purpose - _Waterproof? Pitch? Caulk?_ \- nor the scribbles of seaweed and mussels that fill the empty spaces.  
How the boy he was would have screamed in outrage as Steve tears the page straight out of the book, crumpling it in his fist and throwing it into the fire. The edges curl and blacken in the flames, forming thick leaves of cinder that catch on the wind and fly upwards with the sparks and embers.  
Steve lets out a frustrated sigh, drawing the flat of his hand over the fresh page, and starts again.

“Morning, Cap!”  
Steve looks up from his work to see Scott approaching, boots kicking up the dry sand. While Luis and Scott are billeted with one of his cousins in the village most of the crew keep to the beach, and a shanty town of tents and shelters has built up over the last few weeks. When not working on the repairs to the ship or making a dent in the supplies of rum, they occupy their time however they please, which mostly seems to involve sleeping or failing to catch fish.  
“Mr Lang,” Steve greets him, carefully closing his notebook.  
“I was just on my way to the pool to look for you.” Scott twists his hands together, looking unaccountably nervous. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”  
Steve tucks the pencil inside the front cover before closing the book. “Well, here I am.”  
“Everything…” Scott gestures vaguely before going back to his hand wringing. “Everything alright?”  
“Yes.” Everything is fine. It’s _fine_. He is not getting sand in his boots and wondering what James is doing right now. He is not tormenting himself at all. “Why wouldn’t it be?”  
“No reason,” Scott says, a little too loudly. “Just. Uh. The careening. It’s done. High tide is mid-afternoon so if we want her in the water we should-”  
“It’s done?” Steve cuts off Scott’s rambling, and gets to his feet. “Show me.”

They walk down to where the ship stands at a sharp angle, held in place by hemp and timber. While the crew are sure to check the ropes and struts daily it still makes Steve uneasy, seeing their livelihood hogtied and beached.  
The first night had been the hardest on them all, the sound of straining ropes and creaking timbers louder than the boom and crash of the waves. Steve had not found sleep, listening out for the groan and shatter of a ship wrenched from its mooring. It had not come, and in the morning he woke from a fitful doze to find the ship as they had left it, it’s silhouette stark in the predawn light.  
The Nomad belongs in the water, and the sight of her aground should be unsettling, so Steve does not remark on the way Scott keeps a wary distance from the hull. The wind off the sea buffets the ship, making the wooden struts protests and the ropes strain. Steve has seen her remain upright in worse conditions, and walks into the shade cast by her bulk, reaching up to touch the broad oak planks.  
The crew have done a fine job, scraping the hull clean of barnacles and weeds, and Banner has excelled himself, removing sections too damaged to repair and replacing them with fresh timbers. Steve digs his fingers into the seam between two planks, the weathered oak as hard as stone.  
“These need caulking,” Steve says, moving to another seam.  
“The whole ship?” Scott asks, sounding doubtful. “That’ll take weeks.”  
Steve bites his tongue, taking a moment to swallow what he’d like to say. “Have Banner pick a dozen of the crew, the ones most reliable, and put them to work. The hull needs to be sound, and I doubt we will have the opportunity to make repairs like this again.”  
Scott’s mouth twists up, but he doesn’t argue. Nat will probably do it for him later. “Aye, Cap.”

Steve busies himself on the beach a while longer, checking on the catch from the crewmen fishing further to the south. It is enough for their evening meal but any plans of salting the excess for storage on the ship will have to be set aside for now, especially with the amount Drax can put away. When he can put it off no longer he goes in search of the Ship’s Carpenter.  
When not working on the ship Banner has taken up beachcombing, and can be found searching the tide pools with a bucket and sharp knife. At first Steve had thought he was looking for food, but the last time they had passed each other, Steve coming back from the King’s pool while banner was taking advantage of the low tide, the bucket had been filled with shells and scraps of seaweed.  
Steve is hardly in a position to judge what others do on their laurels, but he fails to see the appeal.  
He finds Banner in the shade of a tree, one of the tall, spindly palms that grow on the island, the kind that spend more effort growing parallel to the ground than reaching up into the sky, and still manage to tower over them.  
“Captain,” Banner greets him, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun, and Steve sees that his day has been spent working on repairing the longboat, replacing the rotten planks and bench seats. Now he is sanding down the rough wood with handfuls of sand, taking pleasure in a job well done.  
“Fine work,” Steve tells him, and there is no lie in it.  
“Well, it’s seaworthy,” Banner shrugs, never one to take a compliment with good grace.  
“I hope you’re not tired of working on boats yet?” Steve runs his hand along the prow. It would be cruel to fill it with water again.  
“I saved some of the board from the hull, pieces that had a good amount of barnacles or seaweed growth,” Banner says. “They’re stored in one of the tide pools further down the beach. Thought they might be useful.”  
Steve thinks of his notebook left by the campfire, and all the sketches he has burned. “Thank you.”  
Banner brushes off the sand still clinging to his fingers. “If you have those plans ready, we can get started on-”  
“I see you finished work on the ship,” Steve interrupts. “I don’t like the fit of some of the boards, the entire hull needs caulking.”  
Steve braces himself for a fight, because he is being ridiculous. Any Carpenter worth his salt would refuse, but Banner nods, his expression unbearably kind. “Very good, Captain. I’ll need some help unless you plan to stay here overwinter, and I don’t think there’s enough pigs on this island to keep the crew fed that long.”  
It’s a gentle reminder, one that Steve needs to hear, of how limited the islanders resources are, and how much a drain the crew is upon them. “You can have a dozen men,” he says, tugging down the hem of his jacket. “And be quick about it, time is getting away from us.”  
Again that gentle nod. “Yes, Captain.”

Steve walks back to his fire, kicking sand over the embers until he is certain it’s out, and picks up his book. With the crew grumbling about being put to work again he has no desire to stay put, and decides to pay a visit on James. He promises himself not to stay long, after all the Merman needs to learn to live in solitude.  
The thought is not one he wants to entertain, and Stev puts it from his mind. With the tide coming in he can’t walk across the rocks to the tidepool so he heads inland, pushing his way through the lush vegetation until he reaches the path that will take him north.  
There is an empty building overlooking James’ pool, and despite Luis’ frequent suggestions, Steve did not make it his bed of an evening, choosing a quiet stretch of beach halfway between the camp and the tidepool to rest his head and pretend to sleep instead. From his vantage point he can see the comings and goings of the crew, who wanders along the beach at night when they should be resting, and who makes their way north to sit with the Merman.  
Luis is to be expected. He takes plates of fish and scraps of roast pork across every day, despite James fending for himself well enough out there. Ava still sits with him at night, though Steve can only guess at what they converse over. Then there are the others.  
Every last man aboard the ship has taken time to walk over to the pool. Every one of them has sat on the rocks while James swims in circles, and shared with him their news. Scott and Kurt take whatever fish they don’t recognise from the day’s catch and James will tell them what is good to eat. He has taught the boy Parker how to harvest limpets, and Ned to avoid the tapering cone shells that they sometimes find on the beach.  
The visits do not happen in secret. Steve has overheard, time and again, someone shouting out that they were going to see James before striking out. Every few days Nat wanders over to Steve’s side and raises the subject of moving the camp a little further along the beach, rather than traipse out to see him. But Steve will not have them sleep so far from the ship, and they cannot drag it across the sand nor can they set it on the water until the hull is repaired.

James is alone when Steve reaches the pool, and the only sign that he is there is an eddy in the water and a flash of green as he skims along the basin, keeping to the shadows.  
Steve sits at the water’s edge, setting down his book and pulling off his boots one after the other. He rolls up his trouser legs and dips his feet into the water, waiting for James to surface.  
He appears a moment later, his hands filled with mussels, and swims over to Steve. He drops the mussels in a clatter on the ground beside him, freeing up his hands to grasp Steve’s in greeting before lifting himself up onto the rock beside him and picking through his breakfast.  
There is all manner of life in the rock pool with him. Clams and molluscs cling to the rock amid the seaweed, preyed upon by starfish and sea snails. With the tide come the fish, though James rarely eats them. Perhaps he has come to prefer the way Luis cooks fish, or like the rest of the crew he likes a little variety in his diet.  
“Hungry?” James asks, holding up the fattest mussel under Steve’s nose.  
“Uh.” Steve has no idea what to do with the damn thing, so shakes his head. “Maybe later.”

James settles into a more comfortable position at Steve’s side, his tail trailing in the water, and puts the rounded edge of the mussel to his mouth. There is a loud crack as the shell fractures against his teeth, and James spits out a few fragments before levering open the unfortunate mussel. He discards the top half of the shell and scratches a fingernail around the edge of what’s left, flipping over the nugget of creamy flesh, brine spilling over his fingers, and holds it up to Steve again.  
There is nothing tempting about the rubbery looking lump sitting in the cracked shell, but it’s James offering, so Steve takes it.  
“How do I…?” he asks, turning the shell around doubtfully. “Do I just… swallow?”  
James cracks open another mussel in a slightly unnerving display of sharp teeth and jaw strength, flicking away the broken pieces and detaching the meat from the shell. He holds it up, checking that Steve is watching, and sucks the mussel into his mouth, chewing with obvious pleasure.  
Steve lifts his own mussel to his mouth, feeling like the butt of some elaborate joke, and tips the knot of flesh onto his tongue. It tastes like the ocean and feels like a lump of india rubber against his teeth. He bites down on it and the mussel springs back, and he has a sudden, unpleasant reminder that he is eating something that is still alive. He chews, trying to school his expression into something less horrified, and swallows, hoping whatever it is doesn’t have the means to crawl back up his throat again anytime soon.  
“Delicious,” Steve says, rubbing his throat to keep from coughing, and James lets out a low chuckle. He picks up another mussel, cracking the shell open in a hard bite, and gently bumps his shoulder against Steve’s.  
“No really,” Steve laughs. “I’m full.”  
James looks unconvinced, but sucks the meat clean out of the shell. Steve can’t help but stare at the movement of his jaw as he chews. The undulation of his throat as he swallows. The shine of his lips.  
His heart thumps in his chest, load as a hammer striking a post, and sends little eddies of sensation across his skin.

James eats his fill before slipping back into the water, leaving a pile of cracked shells that will be washed away with the tide. Steve picks at the limpets that crust the edge of the rock he is sat upon, feeling the sharp points and rough edges under his fingers, and notes that there are no mussels along the edge of the pool. He picks up one of the discarded shells, the inside pearly white, and holds it out to James when he swims past.  
“Where did you find this?” Steve asks.  
James takes the shell and flicks it across the jagged rocks, towards the sea. “There,” he says simply, dipping back under the surface.  
Steve follows the path of the shell, to the waves breaking on the rocks. “You went out to sea?” he asks.  
James surfaces again, a clump of seaweed twisted between his fingers. “Yes,” he says, swimming back to Steve.  
“And you were alright?” Steve asks. “You didn’t get hurt or-”  
James flicks a strand of seaweed at him with a grin. It lands on Steve’s shirt, clinging to the worn linen, and Steve plucks it off. James takes up his position on the rock beside him again, and gives him an encouraging nod before taking a bite of his handful of seaweed. His sharp teeth tear it easily, and he sits back, chewing contentedly. Steve holds the scrap of green up to the light, and figures it can’t be worse than eating mussels.  
It isn’t, and though the texture leaves something to be desired the taste is not unpleasant. When he swallows the scrap James peels off another piece from his handful and holds it out. This time Steve is more willing to accept, and slips the weed into his mouth, chewing slowly.

When the seaweed is finished James seems to think they have eaten enough, and after a few minutes of picking scraps from his teeth, makes himself comfortable on the rock, pulling his tail up around him. He rests his shoulder against Steve’s, watching the waves break against the rock as the sun inches its way up the sky, the shoreline slowly being revealed as the tide draws out.  
“So,” Steve murmurs, pushing lightly against the weight of him. “How long have you been going out to sea?”  
James makes a little clicking _tck-tck_ sound that Steve recognises as reassurance. “Day. Two day.”  
“Two days?” Steve raises his eyebrows. James has been been getting steadily stronger, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s still unexpected.  
“Stayed close,” James points to the rocks being beaten by the waves, and Steve can see the irregular shape of mussels shining darkly against the crags.  
“You were looking for mussels,” Steve realises. “Have you tried swimming further out yet?”  
James shakes his head, combing his fingers through his hair.  
“We could,” Steve hesitates. “If you wanted. The longboat is seaworthy, so I could come out tomorrow. Keep you company. That way if you have any trouble I’ll be there to-”  
“Yes.” James smiles, quick and bright. “You swim with me?”  
“Oh. No.” Steve shakes his head emphatically. “I’ll stick with rowing, I’m. I’m a bad swimmer.”  
“Steve!” James gives him a scandalised look.  
“I know.” Steve holds up his hands, as if he could fend off the inevitable lecture. “I can dog paddle, that’s about it.”  
James makes a low, rattling _crk-crk-crk_ of irritation. “Teach,” he says firmly, poking Steve in the chest with a finger. “Teach you to swim.”  
“Ow.” Steve rubs his chest. “If I say yes will you stop poking me?”  
James grins widely, and in answer dives back into the water, flicking his tail and sending a spray of water in Steve’s face.

*

With a plan sketched out to row out later in place, Nat comes looking for Steve, dragging him away from the sanctuary of the King’s pool and back to his duties.  
His morning trickles away like grains of sand between his fingers as he goes through the ships manifest, checking their list of supplies against what they have in the hold, and marking that against breakages and damage. If nothing else the careening and caulking will spare him the sight of further crates of rattan and linens spoiled by seawater, being thrown into a fire. At least they are not out of pocket, and the fire is warm, even if the plumes of smoke it emits stink of mildew and damp.  
Steve makes his excuses while the crew gather over a midday meal, dragging the repaired longboat down to the water and pushing it into the rolling foam. He takes up the oars, turning the prow against the tide, and rows north, ever watchful of the treacherous shore.  
James is already waiting for him, sitting proud of the waves on a flat topped rock jutting out of the surroundings. He raises a hand in greeting, and Steve would row towards him but he would be fighting the tide and end up on the rocks, so he directs the boat a little further from the swells, and waits for James to come to him.

If there is joy to be had in his life, it is found in the sight of James diving into the water. It is in the strength of him, in his innate grace as he slices through the waves, tail flicking back and forth like a whip.  
Steve leans over the edge of the boat, the clear water affording him a chance to watch James swim past. His broad shoulders, touched toward oak by the sun, are within arms reach, and Steve grips the rail to keep from dipping his hand into the water. He aches to touch, to trail his fingers along cool, slick skin and feel the play of muscles underneath. The twisted knot of scar tissue and the seam where skin becomes scale.  
James surfaces, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes, and gives Steve a playful smile. “Come on!” he calls, splashing water against the hull.  
Steve shakes his head. “Another time.”  
James whistles between his teeth, coaxing and sly, and grabs hold of the boat, hauling himself up. He means to tip the thing over, but with it’s flat base and sturdy breadth he cannot. He gives it a fair shake, almost toppling Steve over, and he lets out a startled laugh. James dives down again, a last flick of his tail sending out a spray. Steve watches him swim away before slipping off his boots and rolling up his trousers. He sits on the flat edge, checking that the boat is steady, and drops his feet into the water. It is cool but pleasantly so, nothing like the sun warmed water that laps the beach. All the time James has spent on the ship, sitting in a boatful of water that was never less than tepid, how he must relish the chill of the open sea.

A splash of water to his face pulls Steve from his introspection. He’s used to it enough now that he doesn’t tip backwards in surprise, just wipes his face with his sleeve and kicks back at the errant Merman, sending out a spray of water that patters over his broad shoulders. James laughs, rolling over, his tail reflecting and refracting the afternoon light. Sometimes it is too bright to look upon, and Steve has to turn away, his eyes prickling as afterimages burn under his eyelids.  
The boat tilts sharply, James gripping the edge again, only this time he isn’t trying to tip it over. He lifts himself up, twisting around to sit on the edge beside Steve, his tail sculling the water to keep the boat from tipping. His shoulder is cold and wet against Steve’s, saltwater soaking into his shirt.  
Steve leans against him, letting James take his weight for little while, and they let the boat drift wherever it wants, rocking gently back and forth.  
Steve can see the masts of the ship jutting up from the beach further south. James follows his line of sight, his expression turning fond when he spies the ship.  
“I was thinking Tortuga,” Steve says absenly. “It’s been too long since we last hunted, and there will be plenty of merchant ships from New York and England in those waters.”  
James hums, showing interest if not understanding. Steve twists around to look at him, his expression turning serious.  
“We will come back here, I swear,” he says, reaching out to take James’ hand in his. “I know you haven’t seen it yourself, but we are not always at sea. Nat has a girl in Curaçao, and there is my friend Sam there too.” Steve grips James’ hand a little too tightly, trying to make him understand. “Luis has his Abuela and his people here. We will come back. Not as often as I would like, these people have so little to trade, but will we come back, I swear to you.”  
James cups Steve’s face in his hand, smiling though he does not understand, and kisses him.

The first kiss is chaste, unbearably so. The lightest touch of lips, plush and red, to the sparse, sun-bleached bristles at the corner of Steve’s mouth.  
The second kiss is firmer, more certain of itself, as James cups the base of Steve’s skull, fingers digging under the knotted cord that keeps his hair tied back. Steve can feel the shape of his teeth, long and sharp, behind his lips.  
The third kiss is open mouthed, cold breath mingling with warm. James’ cold tongue warms quickly when Steve closes his mouth around it and swallows. He tastes of brine and rain hammering on slate tiles.  
James shifts in his grip, though Steve does not remember how they came to be so entwined. Did he order his own arms to wrap around James so tightly? Did he command his fingers to grip James’ shoulder, or the flare of his hip where skin becomes scale? If he did, he does not remember, and all thought has left him, lost in a flood of sensation that he cannot parse.  
_Here_ is the shape of a scale under his index finger. _There_ a jagged tooth that could slice through his tongue, and he would welcome it.  
The kiss ends and does not end. Their lips part, and Steve sucks in a ragged breath, but James’ hands are still twisted in his hair, and there are bright scales under Steve’s fingers.

When Steve pulls away it feels like a rock cleaving from a cliff face, tumbling into the sea. Irrevocable.  
“I love you,” he whispers, and his hands fall away like snowmelt, sluicing from slanted roofs and crashing to the street below. “Understand.”  
He doesn’t ask _do you understand?_ He begs, he demands. _Understand me, I cannot bear the alternative._  
Winter does not thaw into spring for the Merman. His hands still cradle Steve like something precious, and it seems a cruelty that he could cling so tightly as Steve pushes away, cleaved to one another.  
“I have to go,” Steve whispers, and he cannot bear to pull James’ hands away from him, only wait until he is released. “But I’ll come back.”  
“You’ll come back,” James repeats and smiles again, the lines around his eyes deepening to creases.  
He presses one last kiss to Steve’s cheek, scratching his teeth against the scruff of beard, and finally releases him, slipping into the water with nary a splash.  
Steve, his limbs feeling made of clay, turns himself around, dragging his feet back into the boat. He leaves his shoes where they lie, taking up the oars and laboriously turning the boat around.  
He does not watch for a flash of green in the water, keeping his eyes down as he rows to shore.

Nat is waiting for him on the beach, arms folded and features overcast.  
“Cap?” she shouts as Steve climbs out of the boat, pulling it the last few meters onto the beach. “What’s this about caulking the hull? Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to-”  
“Have they started?” Steve cuts her off, and gets a startled look that is quickly suppressed.  
“No,” Nat says slowly.  
“Good.” Steve leans against the boat for a moment, steeling himself. “Get everyone on the beach, I want the ship back in the water.”  
“What?” Nat baulks. “Now?”  
“Yes, now,” Steve pushes away from the boat, heading along the beach in search of Banner. “We set sail with the high tide.”  
“But…” Damn her long legs, Nat catches up to him quickly, keeping pace as he walks across the shifting sand. “What about James? We’ve not even started work on-”  
“James isn’t coming,” Steve snaps over his shoulder.  
He leaves Nat standing on the sandbar, staring after him. She calls out to him, and Steve pretends not to hear, letting the wind carry her words away.  
“He’s staying here,” Steve whispers, as if saying them enough might numb him to their sting.

_I’ll cut away my bonny hair_  
_Lowlands, lowlands away_  
_For no other man may find me fair_  
_My lowlands away_  
_\- Lowlands Away_


	7. Sine qua non

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Not without you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sine qua non - Without which, not
> 
> Check out the wonderful art by Heidi at the end of the chapter! I am so in love with that ship! You can find them on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/winter_sergeant) Their Steve/Bucky art on [Tumblr](https://winter-sergeant.tumblr.com) and all their art on [Tumblr](https://heidimakesart.tumblr.com/)  


In the clamour and roar someone sends Kurt up to the village to find Luis. The Cook doesn’t hold any official position of authority on the ship, other than being the one who feeds them thrice daily.  
It occurs to Steve, sitting on the damp sand with Drax’s hand weighing heavy on his shoulder, in all his years at sea nothing turns a crew from loyalty to anarchy than the lack of food. Only a fool would think Luis was without influence. There is no shortage of fo’c’sle songs about ships Cooks poisoning their crew through incompetence or malice, or stories of fat cleaver-wielders bearing down on gallant cabin boys when times are hard. Upon hearing them one man might look to his fellows and think that he didn’t have things so bad. As far as his crew are concerned, the man that keeps them well fed and happy far outranks any captain, especially when he is rumoured to have a stash of Asgardian mead somewhere on the ship. And Luis has a way of saying no that doesn’t leave a soul feeling hard done by, or talking at you until you clear forget what you asked for.  
If anyone could resolve a mutiny, it would be him.

Steve has never been a patient man, quick to anger and slow to settle. If he seems at ease, kneeling in the damp sand with not a weapon to his name, sword and musket and pocket knife scattered out of reach, he is not. His fingers dig into the wet sand in the hope that a rock or piece of rope might be within reach, something to defend himself with, but he finds only fragments of shell. He can move fast when he has need, but he cannot bring himself to steal the blade at Drax’s hip, or use it against him.  
Steve lets out a sharp exhale as Luis comes tumbling onto the beach, Scott and Kurt at his heels. Drax loosens his grip on Steve’s shoulder, but he doesn’t try to move away. A false move now will only end in blood.  
Luis skids to a halt, sand arcing up around his bare feet, and the crew pause in their quarrelling, watching as he points a finger at Drax as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing.  
“Drax, what the hell, man?” Luis shouts, and the grip on Steve’s shoulder tightens. “That’s our Captain you got there!”  
“Not my Captain,” Drax says grimly, and under his weight Steve’s knees sink a little deeper into the sand.  
“Aw, come on!” Luis groans before turning on his heel, looking at the rest of them scattered across the beach. “Nat?” He shouts. “Nat, you here?”  
Nat is down by the water’s edge, trying to talk Quill down from the nonsense he’s been spouting for the last ten minutes. Quill is furious, his clothes drenched and smoking slightly. She glances over at Luis before putting a pin in whatever Quill has to say, giving him a sharp look that suggests any trouble and the metaphorical pin will become much larger and more literal.  
She walks over to meet Luis, close enough that Steve can hear them, throwing a glance his way. As much as the crew like Luis, it’s Nat they would entrust with the ship. She is a fine Quartermaster, and would make a good Captain, better than he had ever been.  
If she wants the ship it is within her grasp, all she would have to do is give Drax the word, spill his blood on the sand and take her ship and its crew wherever she damn well pleased.  
And Steve would think no less of her.

“Nat, what the fuck is going on,” Luis hisses. “Because this looks like a mutiny, and I can’t-”  
“It is a mutiny,” Nat cuts him off calmly. Luis lets out a strangled little noise, equal parts exasperated and scared, enough to draw Scott over to their little conclave.  
“A what?” he asks.  
Nat scratches her nose, buying herself a few seconds to think. “Cap came onto the beach about an hour ago, said to get the ship in the water, said we were leaving with the tide.”  
“Leaving?” Scott frowns. “But we’ve not started caulking the hull.”  
Nat turns to give him an unimpressed look and Scott clamps his mouth shut.  
“The hull is fine, we all knew Cap was just stalling.” Luis points out.  
Steve feels a sharp sting of embarrassment. Was he really so obvious?  
“Problem is,” Luis continues. “We ain’t built anything for James yet. We can’t keep him in a longboat forever.”  
“James isn’t coming,” Nat says, her mouth pursed. “Cap says he’s staying here.”  
“What?” Scott bursts out, clamping his mouth shut again when Nat glances at him.  
“A couple of the men were in favour of the plan, said we were asking for trouble bringing him along anyway.” Nat nods to where Quill and a few others were standing, well away from the rest of the crew. “While the others felt very strongly about James being left behind.”  
Steve’s mouth twists up a little. That is putting it mildly. Punches were thrown, followed by several crates and, when there were no more crates left, a burning log from the fire. Barton whacked Quill across the shoulders and set fire to his jacket, the remains of it floating off out to sea. Quill and his followers haven’t dared come back up the beach since, not while Ava keeps adding fuel to the fire.  
When one person throws a punch, well, everyone joins in, and negotiations more or less broke down at that point. Then Drax had shouted mutiny, and attention had turned on the Captain. He’s lucky Nat had been there to point out that there were rules for this sort of thing.

“_Hijo de perra_,” Luis sighs, looking Steve’s way. “Alright, let me go talk to him.”  
He wipes his face with the flat of his hand and huffs, sloping over to where Steve is kneeling.  
“Drax,” Luis says gently. “You gotta let him go.”  
“I will not,” Drax rumbles.  
Luis stares up at him a minute, then shrugs, sitting down on the sand beside his Captain. “What the hell is going on here, Steve?”  
Steve’s gaze flicks up to meet his. In all the years they’ve known each other Luis always called him Cap. Captain in the company of other crew, and when he was in his cups lengthy honorifics that made his ears burn. But never _Steve_. Steve wasn’t the name of your leader, or your enemy. It was a name you gave to a friend.  
“He can’t come with us,” Steve answers, throat raw.  
Whatever happens, Steve will not cower. He will hold his head up and face his fate, whatever the crew decide to do to him. He will go quietly to his end so long as James stays where he is safe.  
“You serious?” Luis cuts himself off as his voice rises, the word strangled. He clenches his teeth a moment, exasperated, before speaking again. “Leave him behind?”  
“Yes,” Steve says softly.  
“James?”  
“_Yes_.”

Luis stares at him for a long minute. It is not the stare that accompanies doubt over a plan of action, followed by wary assent. There is not one shred of faith, of belief in his eyes, and if Luis does not trust him then no one can.  
“Steve.” If his soul was not already cracked in two it would break a little more at the soft horror in Luis’ eyes. “It’d break his heart.”  
“We’ll come back,” Steve whispers. He means it, but it sounds a poor excuse. “I told him we would come back.”  
“Did you tell him ‘we’ didn’t include him?”  
Steve doesn’t speak, the drop in his shoulders answer enough.  
“And what if he’s not here when we do come back?” Luis asks. “What if he leaves? What if he tries to find us, or goes off somewhere? What if some chancing bastard sees him out on the water, thinks they’ve seen a fucking Mermaid? You think they’re gonna read him stories and make him a nice bowl of poke?” Luis looks inland, shaking his head, and his next words are charged with an anger Steve has never heard in him before. “What if he doesn’t leave, and he still gets seen? You don’t think word will get around, and sooner or later a ship is gonna drop anchor in these waters, looking for him?” Luis stops, as if he can see the massacre playing before his eyes. “Abuelita is a tough old bird, but they don’t know how to fight, not like we do. You know that.”

In that moment, the certainty that Steve has held so close, that he is doing the right thing, is shaken. The village hidden in the jungle is small. They have no guns, nor would they know how to load and fire them if they did. One ship, that is all it would take. One ship, one gun, a handful of Privateers, and the village would be no more.  
He had never thought to warn them. He never thought to ask.  
“Look, it ain’t a secret, alright?” Luis says, his tone far more gentle than Steve deserves. “We all know what’s going on between the two of you.”  
“Nothing is going on!” Steve snaps. The words spill from his tongue without thought or reasoning behind them, a reflexive denial because the truth…  
If it were another man he loved, the truth would see them both hanged, sinners in the eyes of the law and of God. But James is not a man, so what does that make him? What twisted abomination hangs heavy in Steve’s breast, that beats only for a creature not born of woman? What madness has befallen him, that he could look upon any pretty girl in Port Royal and feel nothing, but for one more taste of James’ lips he would give up everything he has, even his life?  
Steve bows his head, trying to curl in on himself, make himself smaller. If he could he would push himself into the sand, become another fragment of shell, anything but this. Drax tugs on his shoulder, pulling him upright. “Don’t,” he says, dull and implacable as stone.  
“Easy there, big guy,” Luis soothes as Drax digs his fingers into Steve’s shoulder.  
“To know love is an honour. The greatest honour.” Drax tightens his grip, and the pain in Steve’s shoulder sharpens. “Only a coward would not bask in the light of it.”  
Few things sharpen the mind like hurt, and Steve leans into the ache as Drax forces him to sit straight.  
“Yes.” It feels like dying. Like a cutlass flaying him open and levering apart his ribs. His lights and liver, all the fragile pieces of himself kept hidden behind bars of bone and sinew now vulnerable and exposed. Steve presses a hand to his chest, and can almost feel the shape of his heart. He could weigh it in his hand, ten ounces of thought and thew, dig his fingers into the meat and muscle of it and squeeze until it troubled him no more.  
“Yes.” Steve lets his hand fall. “Yes, I love him.”

Sarah Rogers died in his arms.  
He loved her more than anything. She was the sun, the world, and he a pallid moon in her orbit. She had died in his arms, and no prayers to an indifferent God or sympathetic physicians could save her. _Consumption_ they had called it, and it was well named. It ate her up from the inside, until she was a shadow, a paper cut-out of a person, her heartbeat rattling through the husk of her body as her lungs filled with blood.  
He was no stranger to death even then, but it was being so helpless in the face of it that he couldn’t stand. Give him a sword, a stick, something to fight with, anything but this. Anything.  
“Steve,” Luis says softly, and Steve can almost see the words lining up on his tongue, stories of kinfolk and crewmen, tales that meandered back and forth, circling around the point before darting away again. And he would be _convincing_, and if he cannot be convincing he will be tiresome, wearing Steve down with words like the sea against the shore, changing the shape of the land with such gentle persuasion that it does not notice until it is irrevocably altered.  
“He’s not safe with us,” Steve shouts before the first wave can touch him. He hasn’t moved an inch from this spot in the last half hour, so why is he gasping for breath like he has run the length of the island? “And you’re right, I should not have thought to leave him here, but he cannot come with us.”  
“Steve, come on, this ain’t like your Mama.”  
“What the fuck do you know about that?” Steve snarls, teeth bared.  
Luis doesn’t flinch. “I know she’s gone, been gone for a long time, and you think that’s on you.” The smile Luis offers is far kinder than Steve deserves. “I know you couldn’t make a difference then but you do now, you do every chance you get. See the thing with love is it knocks you about some, makes you stupid, like in a fight when someone gets in a punch and the world starts spinning round the wrong way a bit.” Luis rests his hand on Steve’s arm, as if he might not be paying attention. As if the whole damn crew might not be paying attention. “You’re a smart guy, Steve, the smartest Captain I ever had. But seriously you are so fucking dumb, I swear.”

The sharp little exhale Steve lets out is neither laugh nor cough but some unfortunate hybrid of the two. Drax claps him on the back hard enough to distract him from the coughing, if only by worrying about a cracked spine.  
“This is all very touching.” Quill shouts, stamping his way up to rejoin the crew. “But I seem to recall we were in the middle of a mutiny. So by order of the code set down by Bartholomew Roberts, that-”  
“Oh, for the love of…” Nat sighs. “Quill, sit down and shut up.”  
“He’s got a point,” Parker calls out, cringing a little when all eyes turn to him. “I mean…” He straightens up, trying his best to look defiant. “I’m not leaving without James.”  
“Me neither,” Ned, forever at his side, adds. “He’s our good luck.”  
“Since when?” Quill snaps back.  
“We ain’t had any bad luck while he’s been here,” Pietro points out. “That’s like good luck.”  
“If he stays here so do I,” Red shouts from the crowd. “I’m not going back to the ship.”  
“James ain’t staying here,” Luis shouts back.  
“So we leave the Captain here, and take James,” Barton suggests. “Nat, you’ll be the new Captain, right?”  
Steve turns to her, to see what’s in her eyes. Will she agree? Will she at least spare him the mercy of cutting his throat before she takes everything he cares for?  
“James won’t go anywhere.” Ava’s voice, sharp and clear, cuts through the quarrelling. “Not without Steve.”  
She knows James better than anyone, and before today Steve had asked himself, in his darker moments, how close the two of them might have become. She sounds so certain.  
“So he might put up a fight at first,” Barton shrugs. “He’ll get over it.”  
“He’ll drag himself across the deck and over the side the second our backs were turned,” Ava scowls. “Even knowing he was returning to a corpse.”

The crew falls silent. It is one thing to talk about killing your Captain, but it is quite another to have the knife in your hand and the man on his knees.  
“I’ll have no part of this,” Nat says finally. “If it’s a crime to be stupid for the one you love, you can lay me out on the beach beside him.”  
A murmur runs through the crew, and the ones that know of what she speaks nod reluctantly, lowering their weapons.  
“My wife was named Ovette,” Drax says suddenly. “My daughter, Kamaria.” Drax releases Steve, ruffling his hair in a confoundingly friendly way and giving him a pat on the head that makes his ears ache. “I would have died in their place, given the chance.”  
Steve slumps, pressing the heel of his hand to his temple, and wishes he were drunk, or already dead perhaps. Anything but this mortifying experience.  
“It’s settled then.” Luis gets to his feet. “There’s gonna be no mutineering today, fuck knows about tomorrow, you all have issues, you need to talk that out with someone.” He stops, waving a hand in the air as if to dismiss the idea. “We’re all gonna take the rest of the day off, alright? The ship can stand to be beached a couple more days while we figure shit out, and if you don’t wanna sail with a dumbass Captain and his Merman, well good luck finding another ship that’ll take you.” He stops, looking exasperated. “And would it kill you to eat a vegetable once in a while?”

Steve closes his eyes as the crew grumble loudly, agreeing to the terms but haggling over the thing with the vegetables. He feels so tired. For so long he has been afraid. Afraid of seeing James die of his wounds, of sepsis, of wasting away in a bathtub’s worth of water. Of the ship being captured by the British, by the Dutch, by Pierce and his Hydra. Of every bright scale on his body plucked and traded like diamonds. Of every part of him, once beautiful and bright, carved up and sold off by men with pockets bursting with gold, and still it is not enough.  
“Luis,” Steve says softly, exhausted. “He doesn’t belong with us. He belongs in the sea.”  
“We live in the sea,” Luis says lightly. He doesn’t understand.  
“We live on the sea,” Steve says slowly, as though explaining himself to a child. “I’ll not have him kept in a bucket like a fishmongers catch.  
_Butchered and weighed and each dull portion wrapped up in paper._  
“Ain’t your choice to make, Cap,” Luis says. “Ain’t on any of us, not really. We’re squabbling over it here, yeah, but nobody asked James what he wants, did they?” he looks at the gathering on the beach, not quite a crew, but getting back there. “Nobody ever asked us what we wanted, just took us from our homes, our people, and put us to work.” He looks back at Steve. “Then you show up, an’ you do something nobody’s ever done to us before. You invited us to join you, every last damn one of us. You looked us in the eye and you gave each of us a choice. And not the bullshit choice of work for me or take a swim, or starve, or die in some back alley in Tortuga.” Luis shrugs. “Seems only fair you ask Vaquita the same thing, let him decide what he wants.”

*

In retrospect a swift stroke of a blade to his throat might have been kinder. A quick, messy end to it all.  
Instead they walk along the beach until sand gives way to stone, and clamber across the rocks to the pool. They find James sitting in the sun with a handful of oyster shells, using a blunt knife to pare at the mother of pearl lining.  
It is Luis who approaches him, while the rest of the crew stand back. It is Luis who sits down beside him and speaks, his voice too soft for Steve to hear. A knife to the throat would be far preferable to watching the way James stretches his hand out to Steve, to seeing his confusion when Steve does not come to him. A knife to the throat would be better than to stand back while someone else tells James of Steve’s plan to take the ship and leave him behind. There is no chance to soften the blow, no way of couching the betrayal in sweet words and promises, there is only the Luis’ blunt, brutal honesty.  
Steve can pinpoint the moment James understands what he had meant to do. It is not from the way his brow furrows or the downward turn of his mouth, quite the opposite. For a long moment James is absolutely still, as if carved from stone, that is when he knows.  
“Steve?” Luis calls. “Come over here a second?”  
James does not look at him as he approaches, nor offer up his hand. “Jamy?” Steve whispers, kneeling down at the edge of the pool.  
James does not look at him, his gaze reaching no further than the toe of Steve’s boot. His voice when he finally speaks is rough-edged and taut. “You go without me?”  
“You’re safe here,” Steve answers, placing his hand on the ground between them, but James does not reach for it. “Here there’s fish and… and waves, and you can swim as much as you want, you’re not stuck in a boat day and night. You can eat whatever you want, when you want it. You don’t have to eat salt pork or hard tack or…” Steve stops, breath catching. “You’re free here. You want to be free, don’t you?”  
“Not without you.” James shakes his head, a sharp, emphatic little twitch of his chin. “Not where you’re not.”  
Steve sits heavily on the rock, body tilting towards James like the tide to the moon. “I’m not worth it.” The words choke him.  
James reaches out for him at last, his fingers cool and damp against Steve’s own.  
“Yes you are.”

He must be dying, his heart finally giving out, because every breath is an ordeal, as though a great weight sits on his chest. As though his head is finally above water and he can breathe.  
“James. I am Steve Rogers, Captain of the Pirate ship the Nomad,” Steve begins. “There is always a place in my crew for any man or woman… or Merman… willing and able to work. If you are so willing to sign the article and join the crew, you will be given bed and board-” Steve stops, aware of the crew moving closer, and how inadequate the words he recites are for the situation at hand. “Boat and board,” he corrects, and there is a low rumble of laughter from the gathering. “And a share of whatever prizes we take.” Steve pauses, lifting James’ hand to his mouth, the soft bristles of his beard scratching his knuckles. “What say you?”  
“Yes.” James’ smile is wide as the horizon and bright as the dawn, and Steve kisses each knuckle and then each joint as the crew roar in delight.  
“Yes,” James says again, grabbing Steve by the collar and pulling him in for a far more satisfying kiss. The roar around them rises to deafening, and any chance of another kiss or two is abandoned as Luis throws his arms around them both, nearly knocking Steve into the water.  
Later. They will have time later, Steve realises with a sudden thrill, and he turns to the ragged band assembled on the rocks.  
“Alright, that’s enough!” he shouts. “Parker! Bring me a pen and paper. Banner! I want a full inventory of those reserved pieces from the hull you set aside.”  
He is met with twin shouts of assent, and turns back to James. “We need to build you something better than an old longboat, Jamy. Will you help?”  
James laughs, a sort little bark of delight. “Aye, Captain.”

***

“No.”  
“But Cap-”  
“I said no.”  
Steve crosses his arms and glowers at Luis, who doesn’t even have the decency to cower, but then it’s hard to cringe when you’re carrying a fat little nanny goat.  
“I’ll take good care of her, I promise!” Luis hefts the goat up a little, and she bleats companionably.  
“Goats belong on the land, not on the sea,” Steve mutters, and Luis gives him a tired look.  
“Not that again.” The goat nibbles at his sleeve. “You gotta loosen up a little here, Cap. Fish gotta stay in the sea, goats gotta stay on the land. Not everything is all black ‘n’ white, you feel? Little Nat here will be fine on the ship, we’ll bring plenty of hay and she’ll give us milk.” His face lights up like the dawn. “I could make cheese!”  
“If you want milk she has to be with kid, and you won’t even kill the chickens when they’re off lay.” Luis is a soft touch when it comes to animals. He’ll gladly cook a chicken he hasn’t met while it was alive, but when his own stop laying he releases them when they go ashore, so something else can eat birds fat on grain paid out of Steve’s pocket.  
Steve’s thoughts grind to a halt, finally catching up with everything Luis has said. “Wait, you’ve called her Nat?”  
“Yeah!” Luis rotates until Steve can get a look at the goats face. It stares at him as if disappointed in every decision he has ever made.  
Steve bites the inside of his cheek. Some battles you have to walk away from. “Change the name.”  
“You mean I can keep her?” Luis beams at him. It’s unbearable. “For real?”  
“Yes, for real,” Steve sighs. There are still provisions to arrange, half of which can’t be obtained from the island, which means a detour to one of the more lenient trading posts to the east. Lenient but tight-fisted, they’ll get what they need but it’ll cost them twice as much as it would in Tortuga. But with a bit of luck they’ll sight a ship or two en route and do some hunting. That is if they manage to leave the damn island in the first place.  
“You hear that, Stevie?” Luis says to the goat as Steve walks away. “You’re coming with us.”  
Steve clamps his teeth together and heads across the beach to the ship.

“Banner?” Steve calls, grasping one of the ropes hanging down from the rail and hauling himself up. It takes him a few minutes to scale the side of the hull, boots scraping the boards and the fresh caulking wedged between them.  
Banner is up on the Quarterdeck, making his last round of checks on the lagoon. Most of the crew have been calling it, with a fair amount of sniggering, la piscina. Luis had said it once, and Steve knows better than to kick up a fuss. The more he complains the more they’ll say it, so he keeps his mouth shut and waits for the joke to grow old.  
The lagoon covers the length and breadth of the Quarterdeck, but for access to the mast and wheel. The guns that had been mounted at the aft of the ship have been moved to the port and starboard side instead, where they will come in useful should a ship come alongside them in search of trouble.  
The design is simple enough, a square-sided, raised pool made of the thick oak boards Banner had saved from the careening. The topside is decked in straight lengths of palm tree, and Steve can rest his folded arms on the edge comfortably, though the shorter members of the crew might need to stand on a crate.  
Water sloshes back and forth inside the pool, though it is nowhere near full. That will not happen until they are at sea, brought up by a cunning system devised by Scott. For now the water is there to keep the boards from drying out, and the assortment of seaweeds and shellfish growing on their surface in good health.  
Steve can’t help but be fascinated by all the creatures that have made their home on the soaking boards, of the barnacles that form thick crusts here and there, hidden among the weeds. Then there are the sharp-edged shells of mussels that cluster in damp corners, and the bright-shelled crabs and starfish that move between them. There are snails too, so unlike the ones he has seen on land. Banner has made a study of them, filling his notebooks with sketches and observations. Steve has seen him searching the tide pools with a bucket in the early mornings, gathering up all manner of shells and sea creatures to add the the lagoon.  
James will not be lacking things to eat at least, and Banner says that all those creatures will keep the water clean, though how is beyond Steve. He nods along as the Carpenter explains about life in balance and harmony in nature, understanding maybe one word in three. He does not understand how there are creatures in the water smaller than the eye can see, nor does he want to if he ever plans on drinking water again. He does understand the basic point, that the water will need changing less often, and only a small amount at a time so as not to disturb the rest. 

Steve finds the Carpenter in the upper deck, checking the cabin roof for leaks. The ceiling is low enough that he needs no step or ladder to do so, and the white painted ceiling is water-stained from years at sea, so Steve can’t see the harm in a few more stains here and there.  
“Captain?” Banner calls over his shoulder as he works. “One last inspection?”  
“Not quite,” Steve admits, reaching into his coat pocket to retrieve the shell. “James found this out on the north shore this morning, he thought you might like it.”  
Steve holds it up, The shell is the largest he has ever seen, almost the length of Nat’s spyglass. Like any number of snail shells the Carpenter has found washed up on beaches it has a sharply pointed spire and a flared outer lip. Unlike those shells bleached but the sun and cracked open by bird beaks, this one is whole, it’s surface pale cream in colour and speckled with warm brown markings.  
“A Triton’s trumpet,” Banner gasps, reaching out to take the shell. “The largest I’ve ever seen!”  
He turns the shell around in his hands, dragging the pads of his fingers along the smooth insides and the rough spiked exterior. “This is beautiful,” he whispers. “And the shell is flawless! There’s no signs of predation or damage at all. Where did he find it?”  
Steve shifts little uncomfortably, taking great interest in the state of his boots. “Can’t say I care for the taste,” he says at last. “They’re very… gritty.”  
The penny drops, and Banner regards the shell with a little more awe than before. “That is a lot of snail.”  
“Yes.”  
Banner smiles at him, cradling the shell to his chest like a beloved pet. “The things we do for love.”  
Steve brushes his thumb against the corner of his mouth, where the ghost of a kiss still lingers. “She’s been aground too long already, we’ll have her in the water come high tide,” he says, brisk and firm. “Make ready.”  
Banner gives the shell a pat. “Aye, Captain.”

By late midday the waves have crept up the beach, filling the channel dug by the crew and lapping against the hull of the ship. Out on the water, the two longboats wait for the order, their ropes leading to the ship cinched and strung taut. Even James, somewhere below the surf, has a rope of his own to pull, wound once around a submerged rock. When the order is given he will pull with the rest of them. Steve catches a glimpse of green tail from his position on the first longboat, but resists the urge to trail his hand in the water and call his attention.  
Whatever crew that could be spared are on the ship, working under the orders of Barton as they unfurl the sails and work the ropes, waiting for the order to pull on the yardarms and turn the sails to the wind, a forceful push to get them back out to sea.  
Barton whistles, sharp and shrill, and Steve takes a last look in the water, sighting a shimmer of green and marking it as good luck.  
“At the ready!” he shouts, as though they have not been straining to keep the ship in place, and raises his hand to Barton. “Haul away!”  
The crew on the ship heave on the yardarm, and the sails swell, pulling taut. In the water the oarsmen go from gentle sculling to hard rowing, straining against the weight of the ship.  
From his position on the water Steve can’t see much of what is happening on the beach, but he can see the ship’s mainmast swaying back and forth like a metronome, and hear the roar of Drax as he leads the crew in a long haul shanty.  
The ship groans, wood and rope protesting loudly, stretched to their limits. A fresh wave breaks over the bow, and with a sudden lurch the ship begins to move. The sails snap and billow, the mainmast righting, and the ship crests a wave, pulling away from the shore and into the sea where she belongs.

The crew yell and cheer as the ship crests another wave, but there is no time for celebrations. Banner and the crew onboard work quickly on the sails, pulling the ship about and dropping the anchors.  
Steve is the first to climb aboard, scrambling up the rope ladder thrown down for them. The moment his boots hit the boards the itch that has been under his skin since the first went ashore finally eases, and he allows himself a moment to breathe the sea air and stretch his spine. _Home_.  
A moment is enough for now, there is work to be done. The crew from the longboats climb up after him, leaving the oarsman behind to return to the shore and begin the task of ferrying the remaining crew out to the ship. Steve leaves them to their tasks and heads up to the Quarterdeck.  
When Scott had first installed the device on the lagoon he had shown Steve all the working parts, even going so far as to lay them out on the deck. If you put a musket to his head, Steve could not tell you how it works, only that it involved valves and a hollowed out tree trunk and to never operate it when the ship is sitting high on the water, as it will only pull air. To Steve it looks much like the parish pumps that he used to collect water from in his youth, with a long handle that was worked up and down until water sputtered from the spout. Back then the water had been brackish and hardly fit to bathe in, let alone drink.  
He sets to work on the pump, straining a little at first as the damn thing seems unwilling to cooperate. The spout lets out a hollow gurgle and a trickle of water that splashes into the lagoon. Steve keeps working, sweat beading on his brow, and the pump finally stops resisting him, gouts of water spilling out with every rise and fall of the lever. A few luckless little fish spit out with the seawater, and spin around a few times before darting into the depths.

The longboats have ferried the rest of the crew back to the ship by the time Steve is done. His right arm aches, muscles trembling with the labour, and sweat sticks his shirt to his back. He wipes at his brow, too long on land has made him soft, and heads down to the main deck to check on the crew.  
Drax and Quill are hauling the first of the longboats onto the deck while the other, Ava at the oars, still bobs on the water below, waiting to be hauled up.  
Steve climbs down the rope ladder, the longboat shuddering when he lands, and kneels down so he can look over the side. There is nothing to be seen in the blue-tinged water, but he dips his hand in anyway, savouring the cold grip of the sea. A rope is cast down to them, followed by a second, and Ava sets to work fastening them to the bow and stern.  
A minute passes, then another, his hand slowly becoming numb from the chill. Not so deadened that he doesn’t feel fingers trail against his palm, and close around them.  
“There you are,” Steve murmurs, and feels the cold press of lips to his wrist.  
He braces himself, settling his boots against the bottom of the boat, and heaves.  
James slips into the boat, twisting as he falls so as to land in Steve’s lap, and grins up at him. His tail, long and bright, trails in the water, the fin spread like a sail.  
“Drax?” Steve shouts, his gaze never leaving James’ wide smile. “Bring us up.”

_He had a little awl, all made for to bore_  
_And he bored nine holes in the bottom of the floor_  
_And he sunk her in the lonely, lonesome water_  
_He sunk her in the lonely sea_

_\- The Golden Vanity_


	8. Fish and Bird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final art by the wonderful Nabu, who has created so many beautiful pieces for this fic, I could not have hoped for a more passionate, talented and patient artist. Find them on [Tumblr](https://fadefilter.tumblr.com) and[Twitter](https://twitter.com/fadefilter) and send them all your love.  
If that wasn’t enough, the fabulous Heidi has made two gorgeous pieces for this fic too! Go check out their [Twitter](https://twitter.com/winter_sergeant) their Steve/Bucky art [Tumblr](https://winter-sergeant.tumblr.com) and their art  
[Tumblr](https://heidimakesart.tumblr.com/)  
Go send love their way!
> 
> Raising a glass and a tiny knitted Hammerhead shark to Darry, the most hardworking beta reader in fandom, even if I willfully ignored most of their suggestions. Thanks also go to Zee and Krycek, I’d be a lot less functional without you guys.  
You can find me posting photos of tiny knitted fish on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/alittleblackfox) or being Ineffable on [Tumblr](https://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com)

Pietro comes hurtling down the corridor, shoulders knocking the narrow walls, and nearly ploughs right into the Captain. Fortunately Steve has gotten used to the way the boy seems to race through life at a breakneck pace, and manages to catch him by the arms before he knocks them both off their feet.  
Pietro is smart kid, or has enough sense of self preservation not to comment on Steve’s damp clothes and wet hair.  
“Settle down, lad,” he soothes. “What’s the rush?”  
“Stevie got out,” Pietro says in a rush.  
“Again?” Steve sighs. This must be the third time in a week. “Where is she?”  
“No idea,” Pietro admits. “She’s not in the Galley or the stores, so Luis said I ought to check she wasn’t in the hold chewing her way through the textiles again.”  
That damn goat is more trouble than she is worth, forever getting- _what?_ “Again?”  
“Uh.” Pietro starts squirming in Steve’s grip. “Nothing?”  
“Not the English cotton?” Steve’s heart sinks a little. Good cotton is worth its weight in gold in the Colonies.  
“Uh.” Pietro shakes his head hopefully. “Probably?”  
Steve bites back a curse, giving the boy a shove down the corridor. “Well, go find her then!”

With the boy haring off to the hold Steve takes the steps down to the Galley, weaving between the tables to where Luis shovels coal into the stove.  
“Luis!”  
Luis swings the stove door shut before turning to face Steve. Unlike Pietro he has no fear of the Captain, and takes his time looking Steve up and down, marking everything from the water dripping from his ponytail to the way his shirt clings to his damp skin. “Cap,” he says brightly. “You have yourself a nice… bath?”  
You’d think the cold would stop the blush rising on his cheeks, but no such luck. “Stevie,” Steve says flatly, refusing to let Luis derail him this time.  
Luis holds the coal shovel up in defence. “Last time, Cap, I swear!”  
Steve rests his hands on his hips and gives Luis his most damply disappointed look. “Luis, the cotton.”  
“Oh, come on, you’re doing the thing with the eyebrows,” Luis mutters. “We’ll take care of it, I promise. We’ll build a better pen, one she can’t…” He waves the shovel around. “Eat her way out of.”  
“This is the last time, Luis,” Steve warns. “Any more trouble from her and we’re setting a course for Curaçao.”  
Luis looks confused. “What’s in Curaçao?”  
“Sam and his mother’s recipe for curry goat.”  
It’s an empty threat, the crew would never forgive him for cooking up their pet. But it’s enough to get Luis’ rattled “You wouldn’t!” he gasps.  
Steve turns away, striding back through the Galley. “Last time, Luis!” he shouts over his shoulder, before climbing up to the main deck. 

If visibility is poor below deck, the only light coming from oil lamps and lanterns, it is still a marked improvement on the state of things above. A sea fog had descended upon the ship the evening before, a little after eight bells, too fast for them to heave-to out of its path. With the night falling they could not outsail it, and with no stars to navigate by they would get hopelessly lost trying to find a way out, even with a compass. Steve had given the order to drop anchor and wait it out, hoping that come the morning, the sun would burn the fog away. While they waited for dawn watchmen were posted up in the shrouds to look for dangers or other ships, though only a fool would sail in these conditions.  
But it was not all misfortune, the thick cover had allowed a measure of privacy for one to venture up to the Quarterdeck and steal some time with their beloved. The water had been frightfully cold, the fog that clung to the surface so thick Steve could barely see from one end of the lagoon to the other, but it was a hardship gladly burdened. James’ mouth on his had been hungry and sweet, his hands ceaseless in their explorations. Five bells rang out as quick, clever fingers worked their way past laces and buttons, and then what seemed like only minutes later six bells rang. With hands numb in the chill air and wet linen in tangles Steve had struggled to dress, pulling his shirt over damp skin and fumbling with the ties before letting it hang open. The night crew came off duty at eight bells, and he would have had enough time to dry off and change before then, had he not run into Pietro on the way to his cabin.

If he were led by his heart Steve would go straight to the Quarterdeck, but makes a point of walking a circuit around the main deck first. He checks in with the crew, who grumble and cough as cold air works its way into their lungs. Nat had ordered the watchmen to work in hour long shifts overnight, as tired eyes are more likely to imagine approaching ships or miss them altogether, so the men he takes the time to speak with are sprightlier than usual.  
“Ned?” Steve greets the last watchmen on the foredeck. “What news do you have?”  
Ned lets out a little yelp at the sound of Steve’s voice, then quickly pulls himself together. “Uh. Nothing. Well… Quill, who was on shift before me? He said he saw a light in the mist that way.” Ned points out to sea. “I’ve been looking but I didn’t see anything.”  
“What kind of light?” Steve asks, and Ned shrugs.  
“High up, like a star that had gotten lost. Said he thinks it was bearing northeast but he only saw it for a minute or so, then it kind of winked out.”  
“And you’ve seen nothing since?” Ned shakes his head. “Mostly likely it was a trick of the eye, light works strangely in the fog.” Steve gives him a pat on the shoulder. “But keep a weather eye on the horizon, there’s a good lad.”  
“Aye, Captain,” Ned glances back at the billowing fog. “Uh… where is the horizon?”  
Steve points, and Ned gives him a nervous smile.  
“Eye’s open, lad,” Steve tells him. “And all will be well.”

With the crew checked on and his duty done, Steve finally follows the thin trail of lantern light that leads from the foredeck to the aft. He climbs the steps to the Quarterdeck, shivering as the fog wraps around him, the damp ends of his hair frosting in the chill. He cups his hands to his mouth and breathes, a wisp of cloud-vapour escaping his lips, his fingers soaking up the scant heat from his breath. The warmth dissipates quickly, leaving his fingers somehow colder, and he chafes his palms together as he walks over to the lagoon.  
It is not cold enough to freeze the surface, and any ice that may form on the masts and sails will be burned away with the sunrise, so Steve has no cause for concern. He dips a finger in the still water, sending out a ripple, and James answers his call, swimming up from the depths to clasp his hand.  
He rises from the water slow and sleek, barely disturbing the surface, and plucks at the open collar of Steve’s shirt, tracing the faint pink marks peeking out from under the wet linen.  
“That damn goat got out again,” Steve sighs, tugging his shirt closed. James can be extremely persuasive while saying very little, and as tempting as it may be, the last thing Steve needs is the fog clearing to reveal the Captain _in flagrante delicto_. Not that the crew would mind, a few would probably shout out suggestions.

Steve shivers a little, and not just from the cold, and pulls at his clothes. His coat, hastily removed before his impromptu swim, and just as hastily put on afterwards, sits awkwardly on his shoulders, the sodden shirt underneath twisted around. James lets him fumble and squirm for a minute before taking the matter in hand, tugging the hem of the shirt down and pulling the coat until it sits comfortably. Then he carefully slides each brass button into place, leaving wet fingerprints as if staking a second, secret claim over the marks he’d left on Steve’s skin.  
“Stevie,” James murmurs as he finishes the last button. “Can’t eat gold.”  
“Don’t you start,” Steve snorts. “I wouldn’t put it past that damn goat to try.”  
“Goat,” James murmurs, dragging a thumb along the edge of Steve’s beard, taking pleasure in the soft bristles against his skin.  
“I know,” Steve murmurs, taking James’ hand in his and kissing his knuckles. “I’m a mean old goat.”  
“Stevie,” James says again, far more deliberately, and it should not be possible for Steve to love him any more than he already does, but some previously hidden corner of his heart seems to open up like a flower.  
“Stop,” Steve rasps, failing to hide fluster with irritation. James allows him the deception, folding his arms on the edge of the lagoon and looking out at the fog. He tilts his head to one side, eyes narrowing.  
“Damned creature is more trouble than she’s worth,” Steve mutters, fussing over his buttons and the way his shirt rubs against the teeth marks on his shoulder. “Should never have brought her aboard.”  
“The raven chides blackness,” James murmurs, and it takes Steve a minute to catch on. Troilus and Cressida, one of Shakespeare's tragedies, so he had been listening, even in those first days.  
“And the bird fell in love with a whale,” Steve says absently.  
James grins, rising up a little as if to speak, but something in the gloom catches his attention.  
“Light,” he says, pointing into the swirling fog. “What is that?”

Steve turns, following the line of his finger, and sees a muted flash of yellow.  
“Take cover!” he screams, racing over to the ship’s bell and grabbing the clapper, shaking it back and forth and filling the air with a brassy clamour.  
A cannonball punches through the fog, sailing through the air at just above head height and skinning the mainmast before disappearing into the mist on the far side of the ship.  
“All hands!” Steve bellows into the fog, and the sound of the shot hitting the water is lost under the clang of the bell and the stamp of boots on boards as the crew scramble onto the deck.  
Nat is the first crewman to come topside and see the tail end of the cannon’s flight.  
“We’re under attack!” Steve shouts down to her. “A warning shot across the bow!”  
She spins around, pointing out familiar faces in the panicked crowd forming behind her. “Ava! Drax! Quill! Man the guns, take any able bodied man you need.”  
A second passes, maybe two, and it seems like an eternity to Steve. Think, boy. Think! “Barton!” he shouts. “Clew the courses, if we lose a sail we’re stranded!”  
“Aye,” Barton yells, scrambling up the nearest shroud like a spider, Red on his heels.  
Two are not enough to get the job done, no matter how quick they are to work, and Nat picks out a half dozen of the fastest from the crowd, screaming at them to get moving.  
Steve lets go of the bell, shouting over to James in the lagoon. “Stay down!”  
James complies, dropping below the surface like a stone, and Steve climbs the lower shroud, looking out into the fog in the direction the cannonball had come.  
He sees it, a vast shadow in the grey light, a second before Ned shouts “Ship! Ship on the portside!”  
There is another dull flash of yellow in the fog.  
“Brace for impact!” Steve roars, and the ship shudders, listing towards the ghostly image as this shot finds its mark, splintering the hull just above the waves.  
“Take aim!” Nat yells from the main deck. The shape coalescing in the gloom and the flash of light has given them somewhere to point their cannons at least. “Fire!  
A half dozen cannons blast out from the hatches below deck, rocking the ship back with their recoil, and at last the fog begins to clear, revealing the vast bulk of a far too familiar ship pulling up along their broadside.  
The Insight.

Steve pales, grasping the ropes to keep his knees from buckling.  
The Insight is a near three times their size, its decks lined with more guns than Steve can count, and no amount of reckless courage and dumb luck can make up for their being hopelessly outmatched. One order and the Nomad would be blasted apart by cannon fire.  
Pierce could have destroyed them while they were still fumbling around in the fog, so why do they still live?  
Steve clambers down from the shroud, ropes burning the palms of his hands, and hits the deck hard enough to make his knees ache. He has no time to think on pain, and clatters down the steps to the main deck. Pierce’s attention will be on wherever Steve is standing, and when the fog clears he must be as far from the lagoon and its precious contents as he can.  
Steve comes to a halt halfway across the main deck, pausing to catch his breath and straighten his coat. Only then does he lean against the gunwale and cups his hands to his mouth.  
“Pierce?” He bellows at the looming bulk of the ship. “You have my attention!”  
It takes little time to get a reply, the old bastard clearly waiting for him to speak up. Pierce leans over the ornate rail of the main deck, the last wisps of fading fog clinging to the painted boards, and raises his hat. The plume of ostrich feathers fastened to the brim hang limply, weighed down by the damp air.  
“Steven!” He calls down, his smile a little too wide, his eyes brittle as sun-bleached shells. “There you are.”  
“Here I am,” Steve agrees. If the bastard is talking, he’s not firing on them, and maybe that will give them time to come up with a plan. He sees Nat move into his line of sight, seen but unmarked by Pierce. The man has little respect for women, and gives little notice to the way she gestures where he cannot see. Steve makes a circle of thumb and forefinger behind his back, and Nat slips away again. 

Pierce looks out past the ship at the slowly dissipating fog, the rising sun slowly burning through the chill, and makes a show of choosing his words, performing for his men. “You’re a hard man to find, Steven.”  
How long has Pierce been looking? And what’s so important about him and his ship?  
Steve remembers the feel of onion skin thin pages under his fingers, mouth shaping word after word after word. What was that line, the one from As You Like It? _All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players._  
He forces his shoulders down, rocks his head from side to side, the tension in his jaw refusing to ease, and shrugs.  
Pierce’s smile twists. “Where have you been hiding, Steven?”  
Steve keeps his eyes on the Insight. He does not look to the Quarterdeck, or to where Mexico might lie somewhere past the horizon. “Who says I’ve been hiding?”  
The conversation is clearly not going as Pierce had planned. Steve does not beg for his ship or his men, does not even acknowledge the warship towering over him. They might as well be exchanging pleasantries on a busy street for all he gives away.  
Pierce taps his outlandish hat against the railing, looking irritated. One of his crew comes to his side, whispering something in his ear, and Steve lets his gaze wander. It is strange how few men are on the deck of the Insight, how despite all the guns it should be laden down with, only a few of the gun ports are open and manned.  
“Spread thin, are we?” Steve murmurs under his breath. 

Pierce’s grand plans, of Hydra’s influence spread across the seven seas and a great Pirate city, were ambitious. Perhaps a little too ambitious. Had crewmen mutinied, arguing over money and power and the division thereof? Were they breaking into factions, each one demanding loyalty while tearing into their former brothers? Money is a frayed rope to tie people together, and those who seek wealth will never find they have enough.  
Nat reappears, moving over to Steve’s side while Pierce is distracted. “When you’re ready, Cap,” she mutters, jaw working.  
“The crew?” Steve whispers back, looking for all the world like a man patiently waiting for a conversation to resume.  
“Prepared to take a last stand,” Nat says, spine stiff. “We’ll drag a fair few of those bastards down to Davy Jones with us.”  
Steve risks a look her way. “Take heart,” he says. “And look to their guns.”  
She frowns, eyes twitching back and forth as she counts the open gunports, nary a handful. “Still enough to sink us,” she concludes.  
There is no escaping that, and Steve comforts himself in the knowledge that James will have a fighting chance. When the ship finally sinks he can swim away, and if he has any reason he will get as far away from Pirates as he can, find some quiet corner of the world, hidden from man and all their horrors.  
“Get back down below,” Steve knows in his heart this will be the last order he gives her. “Tell them aim for the masts and below the waterline.”  
“The waterline?” Nat hisses.  
“The size of that damned ship, and the scarcity of her crew?” Steve smiles in spite of everything. “A few good hits and you think they have the manpower to bail the water out?”  
Nat shakes her head. “It would take weeks to sink a ship that size.”  
“Torn canvas can be repaired, but with the mainmast down they’ll be stranded,” Steve adds, nodding to the sails. “We’ll sink them the same as they sink us.”  
A good Captain would not think to sink a fellow ship, a good crew would refuse. It is his greatest fortune that Steve is not in the company of good men.  
“Aye, Captain,” Nat murmurs.

“Steven!” Pierce shouts down, and Steve gives Nat a last nod as she retreats from his sight.  
There is not a soul on the deck with him, all of them down below or up in the shrouds, and to Pierce he must look very small and very alone.  
He looks up at Pierce expectantly. “What?”  
“Have you considered my offer?” Pierce leans over the rail, grinning like a cat with a cornered mouse. “Won’t you join us?”  
Steve responds with another expansive shrug. “What would you want with a little ship like ours?”  
If they are to meet their end, he’ll see Pierce squirm a little first. Steve would be blind not to notice how outsiders see him, Captain Rogers and his unerring ability to instil loyalty in a crew. A useful man to have at hand if your empire was falling apart, with loyal friends and former crewmates hidden in port towns across the Caribbean. What would Pierce say if he had seen the Nomad a month ago, half the crew ready to cut Steve’s throat for daring to leave behind one of their number, and rightly so.  
Pierce scowls openly. “Do not play with me, boy!” he snaps. “What say you? Will you join us, or must I blast your ship apart?”  
“What say you, men?” Steve calls out, looking up to the rigging where figures cling like spiders on a web.  
“Tell him to go fuck himself!” a voice shouts from the mainmast.  
Ava. Steve swallows down the laugh building in his throat. Red, hauling the last rope of the topgallant, lets out a loud yell in agreement.  
“Aye!” A second voice joins Ava’s, Drax, yelling out of one the gun ports. “Tell him to impale himself on a narwhal’s horn!”  
A chorus of voices follow, each offering something distressingly creative that Pierce could do to himself.  
“So much for Parley,” Steve mutters, and leans over the gunwale. “Fire!”

The crack and boom of cannon fire fills the air, smoke and flames mingling with the last traces of fog. A few shots hit their mark above the waterline, clipping the Insight’s main and fore masts, but most punch through the water toward the hull.  
Pierce snarls, jamming his hat back on his head. “Return fire!” he shouts, just as Steve shouts to reload, racing up to the Quarterdeck.  
The ship judders, the section of gunwale where Steve had been standing a moment before shattering as a cannonball rips through the oak and skitters across the deck. Another shot grazes the top of the mainmast, the topgallant ripping in two, the shock of impact knocking a crewman off the ratline and into the sea.  
From below decks comes a muffled roar, cries of alarm as water pours in through a breach in the hull alongside orders to reload. By the time Steve reaches James he has already surfaced, his eyes wide.  
“Steve?” he calls, reaching out for him.  
Steve grasps his hand, tight and urgent. “We are done for, love,” he says, as softly as he can. “Stay down, when you can make it to the ocean you dive, you hear me? You get away from this ship and you don’t look back.”  
Across the water Pierce calls his men to reload, and Nat gives the order to fire. The ship pitches again, the men up in the rigging yelling as they cling to the ropes for dear life. Below deck there are fresh calls for shot and powder and extra hands, and the sound of Banner rallying men to work on repairs. He will keep them afloat as long as he can, but the hull is already breached. The ship lurches violently, and Steve turns away, twisting free of James’ hand.  
“Steve!” James shouts, digging his nails into Steve’s skin, raking down his arm and raising four ragged welts. “Take me below!”  
Steve turns back to him. “What?”  
“They’re drowning!” James hisses, looking desperate. “Can’t you hear?”

If Steve were to stop and listen to the voices of his men he would fall to his knees and never get up. Beneath the crack and splinter of oak giving way, beneath the rattle of iron on iron as the cannons are reloaded, and the rush of water coming through the hold, he can hear screaming. Voices cracked and desperate, fists pounding on splintered boards on the boards as the people trapped below call for help.  
James holds on tight to his hand, nails digging into Steve’s skin. He is one of them, is he not? Man or not, James signed the article with a neat letter J and a dose of good brandy, and does that not give him the right to fight with them, to die as one of them?  
“Quickly!” Steve hisses, gesturing for James to come up.  
James launches himself out of the lagoon and into Steve’s arms, tail sending out a spray of water. Steve staggers under the weight of him, tail dragging along the boards like a bridal train as he carries James down the steps to the chaos below decks.  
While the Gun deck and Galley are still dry, the water is already waist deep in the hold and rising fast, the lanterns snuffed out in the commotion, and Steve finds his way through touch and memory. He can hear Nat overhead still shouting orders, the draw and rattle of cannons being positioned, and somewhere nearby, sound distorted by water and wood, Banner calling out for aid.  
James twists out of his grip, hitting the water with a splash, and an instant later he has vanished.  
Steve fumbles after the sound of Banner’s increasingly frantic calls, disoriented as voices echo oddly on the water, until a lantern is raised, blinding him.  
“Banner?” Steve blinks, covering his eyes.  
“Luis,” Banner says, turning to face the hull. His plugs and caulk float on the rising water amid the detritus, abandoned in favour of a failed rescue. “Didn’t see it coming. A shot went right through the deck, dropped the gun right on top of him.” He holds out the lantern, and in the gloom Steve can make out shapes in the water. Pietro surfaces and gasps for air before diving down again, grasping at the black barrel of a cannon. Pinned under the weight of it and submerged to the chin, Luis stares at the rising water, eyes wide and terrified.

Pietro breaks the surface again, gasping for breath. “I can’t,” he wheezes, eyes stinging with saltwater and shame. “It’s too heavy, I can’t.”  
“Out the way,” Banner says, pushing the lantern towards Steve. “Let me-”  
“No,” Steve shoves the lantern back at him, the flame flickering. “Get back to work.”  
“What?” Banner looks aghast. “He’s drowning, I can’t-”  
“Plug the holes!” Steve snaps at him, sharp as a slap to the face. “Plug them before we all drown.”  
Banner says nothing, wading into the water and scooping up his supplies. A glittering green shape slips past him, scything through the water to where Pietro is still struggling.  
Quill comes staggering towards them from out of the darkness, drawn to the lantern. He is soaked to the skin and coughing up water, hand pressed to his chest. He stares at them, mouth opening and closing, and it takes no time to work out where James had disappeared to.  
“He…” Quill splutters. “I was pinned down … and he…”

There is movement in the water, and Pietro stumbles as if something had knocked him aside. “Hey!” he shouts, righting himself. “There’s something in here!”  
“You know how to plug a hole, right?” Steve snatches up a stray bung as it floats past and throws it to Quill. “Get to work!”  
“Shark!” Pietro shouts, staggering backwards and into a fallen beam. “There’s a shark, it must have gotten in-”  
“Go with Banner!” Steve snaps at him. “Fetch more bungs and cloth, and get these holes filled!”  
“But there’s a-”  
Luis lets out a shout, and Steve wades after him, reaching into the water. The flat of his hand briefly touches scales, smooth and sleek, before reaching the open mouth of the cannon. He grips the black iron lip, bracing his feet as best as he can, and feels the weight tipping before he has even begun to pull.  
The cannon tips violently, and Steve is knocked out of its path by a broad, sweeping tail, staggering through the water as it rolls over completely.  
Steve reaches into the water, grasping Luis under the arms and lifting him up.  
“Takes him up to the Galley,” Steve shouts to Pietro, hauling him over to Banner. Nowhere on the ship is safe, but the Insight’s cannons are trained on the masts and the gundeck, leaving the Galley unnoticed. “Anyone else sick or injured, move them to the Galley.”  
Pietro nods, one eye on the water and wades over to help Luis up.  
“V’quita,” Luis wheezes, and Steve sends them both on their way.  
Banner raises the lantern again, there is nothing moving in the water. There are other voices in the dark, calling for help, waiting to be answered.  
“Plug the holes,” Steve says again. “Keep us going as long as you can.”

Time moves strangely in the dark, the echoes of distant voices and the creak of boards and the splash of water reverberating around him as Steve makes his way through the hold. Steve cannot tell if mere minutes pass in this cavernous hell, pushing his way past the crates of cargo that have come loose and the splintered boards that block his path, or if they are truly the hours they seem to be.  
He fumbles his way through the gloom, the lantern left with Banner while he and Quill work on the hull, and finds his way to the gundeck.  
It stinks of powder and smoke, even with the sea breeze blustering its way through ragged holes in the hull. Shafts of sunlight spear the shadows, streaming through the deck above and the hull to his side, lighting the way ahead.  
While the Nomad had taken aim on mast and hull, the Insight had looked to their guns. Not every shot had found its mark, but the ones that did cost them dearly. Steve pauses, peering through a ragged hole in the hull, eyes stinging at the bright morning beyond. He sees the Insight, sitting on the water at an odd angle, Pierce watching as they flounder and fail to return fire. He could sink them with a single command, but all he does is watch.  
Steve moves on, searching through the smoke and debris for Nat, finally finding her hidden in a darkened corner with Drax and Scott and the last of their cannons.  
“Stand down,” Steve tells them, and Nat starts to argue.  
“Steve, you can’t-”  
“Stand down. Make them think us dead in the water, Nat,” Steve talks over her.  
“We are dead in the water,” Scott points out.  
“But we’re not dead,” Steve counters. From the moment he saw James slip past him in the hold he has felt something spark within him. Something close to hope. “We may look it, but we’re not.”  
“The mast stands firm,” Drax says, sounding hopeful. “And holes can be repaired.”  
“There is a warship,” Nat says slowly. “You think Pierce will let us patch ourselves up and limp away?”  
“No, he wants the ship,” Steve says without thinking. Oh. “Just because we won’t join his collective, doesn’t mean he’ll sink a good ship.”  
“No, he’ll just wait for us all to drown, or beg.” Drax scowls. “I will not beg.”  
“So what? We let him think we’re dead?” Scott’s mouth drops open. “Like possums.”  
“Like what?” Nat, who has never set foot on American soil and doesn’t intend to, looks at him askance.  
“Roll over and play dead,” Scott explains. “Until whatever is trying to eat you goes away.”  
“So we keep quiet,” Steve continues. “We shore up where we can and we patch the hull, keep any more water from getting in, and we act like we are wrecked.”  
“And then what?” Nat hisses. “Wait for them to leave? They’ll board us, kill whoever’s left and take the ship. You know that.”  
Steve thinks of James slicing through the water. James with the strength to move a cannon. “I have an idea.”

*

“Steven?” Pierce leans over the rail, looking far more at ease than his crew.  
The Insight is not unscathed. Several of the sails are torn to shreds, and the main mast is cracked in two, but no one is attending to it. What crew that remain on deck seem preoccupied. If Pierce had the view Steve does, he would note how sharply they are angled against the horizon, but all he sees is his prey listing in the water.  
“Steven?” Pierce calls again. “I do hope you’re not dead.”  
One of his crew tugs at his sleeve, uttering a warning about the hold, and Steve chooses that moment to climb onto the deck.  
The Nomad has looked better, even he can admit it. The topgallant gone completely, and the deck is slanted sharply and so heavily pockmarked that walking from one end to the other is a challenge.  
“Sorry,” Steve shouts up with a smile. “You missed.”  
The ship is tilted over as far as Banner would allow, every crate and barrel and cannon positioned just so to tip her so far and no further, turning the splintered expanse of the gundeck to the sun. What it does not reveal is the frantic plugging and caulking going on below decks, and the working of Scott’s bilge pumps returning salt water to the sea where it belongs.  
Pierce scowls at him. “Aren’t you a little ship rat,” he sneers. “Half-drowned and surviving on scraps.”  
“And hard to kill, it seems,” Steve adds.  
“We shall see,” Pierce mutters, and turns to the nearest crewman, calling for a pistol.  
“We’re taking in water, sir,” the man says. “The pumps can’t keep up.”  
“Then find the leaks!” Pierce snaps. “And get me a pistol.”  
“There are too many, sir,” the man says, frantic. “By the time we patch one four more have sprung up in its place. The ship is breaking apart, sir!”  
Pierce strikes him across the face with an open-handed blow. “I said bring me my pistol, you insolent whelp!”  
The man hurries away, and does not return.

If Pierce were to look down, he would not see that there is a shape undulating through the waves, darting from the Insight to the Nomad.  
He does not look, but Steve does, leaning over what’s left of the gunwale. he sees the flash of green as it disappears under the hull, and raises a hand, giving the signal to Ava, hiding on the far side of the ship, to lower the lifeboat. She takes to the pulley, the longboat knocking gently against the hull as it drops. The sound drowns out the clink and rattle of chains as Drax, hidden amid the wreckage at the stern, weighs the anchor, dredging it up from the depths by hand.  
“Someone bring me a goddamn gun!” Pierce roars, and the Insight tilts violently, its vast bulk groaning loudly as the wood and rope strain against the weight of the sea. There is a cry of abandon ship from somewhere beyond Steve’s sight, and Pierce roars at them to belay the order.  
In their confusion they don’t notice the Nomad slowly righting itself, as the crew redistribute the contents of the hold. Nor do they see a lifeboat being hauled onto the deck, or James’ smile, wide and sharp as the axe in his hands.  
Steve leaves Pierce to his frantic crew, walking over to the longboat to takes James by the hand.  
“It’s done,” James tells him, fierce and proud.  
“And you did beautifully, love,” Steve whispers, kissing James’ knuckles one by one.  
He would linger over the salt of James’ skin and the light in his eyes, but they are not saved yet.  
“Barton?” Steve murmurs to the man hidden behind piles of ropes. “Hoist the sails. Set a course for Santiago.”  
There is a whisper of ‘Aye’s’, and the crew move across the ship, scrambling up the shrouds and onto the ratlines. The ropes clewing the sails are cut and the sheets pulled taut, and the ship lurches, pulled by the wind.

Pierce lets out an outraged roar, rushing to the railing of the Insight to see the ship pull away.  
“No!” he bellows after them. “Man the guns! Blast them out of the water!”  
“Cap? Nat’s voice trails up through a hole in the deck, and Steve leans over the edge to see her hunched over the last working cannon. She raises an eyebrow, a tinder in hand.  
“You think you can get that stupid hat?” Steve asks, more curious than anything.  
“Worth a shot?” Her face is smeared with soot and blood, but she is grinning wider than Steve has seen.  
“You do it and I will turn this ship about and take her straight to Curaçao,” Steve promises.  
“Damn,” Nat breathes, and turns her attention to the cannon, pulling it along its rail until she has the ship in her sights.  
“Fire!” she shouts, and up in the rigging and down below decks the crew brace themselves. The shot is wide of the mark, sailing over Pierce’s head and striking the mainmast. After a moment of teetering, the mast snaps in two with a deafening sound, the weight of it pulling the beleaguered ship sideways. She crashes into the sea, sending out a tidal wave that buffets at the hull of the Nomad, but she rides out the waves and does not overturn.

The crew gather on the deck to watch the Insight sink slowly into the blue, but Steve gives it barely a glance, he has far more important matters to attend to.  
“Up you come,” he murmurs, reaching into the longboat and scooping James into his arms. “Watch the tail, can’t have you getting splinters.”  
James wraps his arms around Steve’s shoulders, flicking his tail up as Steve carries him up to the Quarterdeck and the lagoon.  
The tilt and roll of the ship has knocked more than half the contents from the pool, but there is enough to wet James’ tail, and the pump is in working order. It doesn’t take Steve long to refill it, and whenever he glances up from his work he can see the diminishing shape of the Insight in the distance.  
Down on the main deck celebrations have begun in earnest. Kurt and Dave vanish for a while, only to return with a barrel of rum between them, Luis sitting proudly on top.  
A good Captain would tell them to get to work, but fortunately Steve is no such thing. Let them drink and be merry; they are alive, and will feel it all the more come the morning when they wake with sore heads.  
James tugs at the loose strands of hair framing Steve’s face, and with a careful thumb wipes away the smears of blood spattering his skin and the splinters trapped in his beard.  
“Captain of our fairy band,” he murmurs fondly, and Steve captures his hand, favouring it with a kiss.  
“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” he agrees, and kisses James once more.

*

By late afternoon the revelries are in full swing, and a few of the crew have started putting the day’s events into the form of a song. Steve catches the odd line here and there, florid verses of a creature of the sea and a proud ship’s Captain.  
James leans against the barnacle crusted edge of the lagoon, listening as a refrain rises up in tongues loosened with rum.  
“Is that another verse?” Steve tilts his head, listening. “It’ll take them a week to recite the whole thing at this rate.”  
“You should write it down,” James says. “Before they forget.”  
Steve huffs, too self conscious to put all that business to paper, especially the part about meeting by moonlight. So much for being discreet. “They’ll remember the parts that matter, Jamy,” he promises. “Songs have a way of changing, of living past the ears of their first singers.” He smiles, a little ruefully. “In time it will bear no resemblance to the truth, but that’s no bad thing.”  
Before James can argue further, Nat picks her way up the steps, a bottle of brandy in hand.  
“Captain, James,” she says, holding the bottle out. “By order of your loyal crew, you are to drink and be merry, lest thirty crewmen come up here and show you how.”  
Steve swipes the bottle, knowing full well what trouble that lot can cause when they put a mind to it. He’s already had to dissuade Drax from taking a dip in the lagoon.

“What news of the ship?” Steve asks, pulling out the cork with his teeth and offering the first taste to James.  
“Nine injured, Luis has three broken ribs, but that is the extent of it. Four lives were lost,” Nat says, folding her hands behind her back. “I would advise a memorial in the morning, when the crew are more of a mind to quiet contemplation.”  
“It could have been far worse,” Steve says, watching James take a sip from the bottle and pass it over.  
“The ship fared ill,” Nat continues. “Repairs are needed to the mainmast, the main deck, the gun deck, the-”  
“I get the idea,” Steve cuts her off. “And the rest?”  
“We lost four cannons, all our plunder, and half the rations.” Nat pauses, her expression concerned but determined. “I will need to do a full inventory before I know the extent of the loss.”  
“At your pleasure,” Steve says, taking a swig of brandy.  
Nat frowns at him. “Captain? I just told you that the ship is in dire need of repair, that we have lost our prizes, our food, and our guns.”  
“We have,” Steve agrees with a smile. “But we are alive.”  
Her frown becomes a full glare. “Have you finally taken leave of your senses, Captain?”  
“No, I have not,” Steve assures her, offering her the bottle. “We have faced worse. The ship is sound enough, and we are bound for Curaçao, where we will make repairs and resupply.”  
Nat takes a large swig of brandy, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “And how do we pay for all that?”  
“Call a meeting.” Steve takes the bottle back, handing it to James. “Tomorrow, after the service. The crew will be in low spirits, and in need of new adventure.”  
“New adventure?” Nat looks at the pair of them dubiously. “You know of a prize to be had?”  
“I do.” Steve takes a breath, savouring the change in the sea air. “A sunken treasure galleon at Grand Bahama.”  
“The Maravillas?” Nat shakes her head, no doubt convinced that Steve has lost his mind. “No ship can sail those waters! We would be wrecked on the reefs or grounded on a sandbar.”  
“The ship would,” Steve agrees. “A longboat wouldn’t.”  
“And then what? Swim down to the wreck? How good a swimmer are you, Captain? How long can you hold… your… breath…”  
She turns to James, who rests his chin on his folded hands. “A long, long time,” he murmurs, his eyes bright as stars.

_They bought a round for the sailor_  
_And they heard his tale_  
_Of a world that was so far away_  
_And a song that we'd never heard_  
_A song of a little bird_  
_That fell in love with a whale_  
_\- Fish and Bird_


End file.
